The NHS quality is dependent on where you are in the UK. For example my 92 year old grandmother cannot make an appointment in advance to see her GP (general practioner). Instead she has to call the practice from 8:30am to get put on a list for that day. If she is lucky enough to get through on the phone she then has to be lucky enough to have been one of the first patients to get through (it is normally engaged due to high demand). Once she is on the list she has to go down to the practice and wait. That wait could be up to 3 hours. She is blind and deaf.
I live in Germany on the other hand and I am privately insured. I can get to see a doctor easily. However my health insurance has a strange caveat in that I must see and be referred by my GP if I have to see a specialist doctor. My health insurance recently refused to pay for a visit that I made to the ER for a broken arm which was caused whilst playing football at 8pm (long after my GP had hone home). I was expected to wait until the next day in agony to complete their beaucratic hoop jumping.
That being said I like the UK system because it is free (excluding taxes), whilst in general the German quality of service is exemplary (although non private patients have a much poorer QoS). If I was seriously I'll with cancer or something that requires a expidited process between diagnosis and operation then I'd chose Germany every time.
Where I am, if you want a doctors appointment it's either a normal appointment or an "emergency". If it's not urgent, you ring up whenever and make an appointment, but it'll be a few days at least. I once waited a fortnight for something non-urgent.
But if it couldn't wait that long, you rang at surgery opening (8:00 iirc) and they give you a time for you to turn up. You turn up and then you wait to be seen. They fit you in as quickly as possible, average wait for me is usually about 45 minutes I guess?
Is it emergency appointments your nan is trying to get?
There's definitely an element of what we call "Postcode lottery", the quality and provisioning of medical care can vary based on where you live. But generally, while we British bitch and moan about it, it's brilliant.
I live in Germany on the other hand and I am privately insured. I can get to see a doctor easily. However my health insurance has a strange caveat in that I must see and be referred by my GP if I have to see a specialist doctor. My health insurance recently refused to pay for a visit that I made to the ER for a broken arm which was caused whilst playing football at 8pm (long after my GP had hone home). I was expected to wait until the next day in agony to complete their beaucratic hoop jumping.
That being said I like the UK system because it is free (excluding taxes), whilst in general the German quality of service is exemplary (although non private patients have a much poorer QoS). If I was seriously I'll with cancer or something that requires a expidited process between diagnosis and operation then I'd chose Germany every time.