eConsult Health Limited Reviews 

Disgraceful. The whole process is very stressful, multiplies the affects of anxiety and affects your whole mood. When your getting over a mental breakdown and suffer with anxiety, stress, depression it heightens the affects. Those who suffer with symptoms like this should still be able to call the Dr's surgery to make an appointment, which is hard enough itself to do. Having no other option but to do the online process makes things much worse. It must be even worse for those who suffer severely with mental health. Also the elderly who aren't use to using the Internet and completing the online process, I can't imagine how many give in due to the process, all the questions.If not done correct, you have to start whole process again. I hate to think of the amount of suicides and deaths caused as not an easy process to complete. Total and utter disgrace. After 2 days im still waiting for a reply after reporting low mood,suicidal, thoughts of self harm, pains in chest and other private issues.

Not 24hrs access to surgeries. (They choose their own hours) total waste of tax payers money. Well done NHS.

A dreadful system. You have to invent symptoms simply in order to get an appointment - and my GP agrees! Unless my GP practice resumes telephone appointments I shall complain to the PHSO. Normally I would say 'do not touch with a bargepole' but what choice do we tax-paying patients have in the matter?

It won't find my doctors and it takes to long to ring them up for an appointment

There is one one function that Econsult fulfills well - reduce the load on NHS (which also means you [as a patient] get to F off).

No consideration for women's health. This is a terrible system that forces you to present a 'problem' and go through their triaging for common requests such as booking an appointment for a cervical smear. I've had to answer dozens of irrelevant questions simply because this isn't designed to consider basic women's health needs.

I used eConsult linked from my GP surgery’s website to make a submission to my GPs surgery but while submitting the URL changed to a different surgery miles away. The said different surgery texted me back when I had previously requested contact by email saying I had messaged the wrong surgery. I am a retired IT specialist it was impossible for me to change to an alien URL

As the wait to see or talk to a doctor was over 3 weeks, I was advised to use eConsult, as this would result in a quicker consultation. This I did and, in answer to the first question, supplied all the relevant information. However, the system required more information and after answering some more questions, the system indicated “We can't safely assess your symptoms through this online request. You need to talk to someone today instead.” And so back to square one!
I question whether, after eConsult was set up, it was tested by someone not connected to the setting-up. If it had been, it would not have been introduced in its current form.

Receptionist asked me to use this as doctors were busy - it forced me to wait till 8am the next day to fill out an ONLINE FORM

after 10 minutes of questions and filling out boxes It threw everything in the bin because "My symptoms need to be discussed with a doctor."

Yet another way to send you in circles.

One has an ongoing medical condition which is causing concern. The GP practice is now playing the eConsult game. The online link to eConsult webpage displays a 404 Error message, therefore, one used the telephone number supplied.

At the second attempt the telephone link took 35minutes before a human answered. The human questioning took a further fifteen minutes.

I requested a GP appointment, eConsult sent an email with instructions to collect a prescription from the pharmacy, to keep a BP diary and for me to book an appointment for a blood test.

No GP appointment was offered, no satisfactory email explanation, leaving one no closer to knowing why my medical condition is deteriorating. One simply feels written off by an uncaring NHS system.

I’d just got out of hospital & needed more painkillers. But my problem wasn’t on the econsult list of ailments & even after putting in all the symptoms all I got was “we can’t diagnose the problem you need to speak to someone”. But there was no information about how I was supposed to make the appointment the surgery had asked me to make through econsult. I had to get the prescription via NHS111.

Absolutely terrible service I tried booking an appointment at the beginning of the week...on the email I was told I would be contacted by 6:30..that time came and went I had the same thing happen again when I resubmitted the form again I won't be using it again it's like they don't care about patients care

My doctor’s practice now has E consult which appears to achieve 1 outcome. It now makes it impossible to talk to anyone. If my question is not covered by the std checklist I now need to wait 4 days before anyone calls or emails. Straw broke the camel’s back !!!

its not as useful as pants. not user friendly. Never had a good experience yet and does not allow one to ask or place the information you require or need

What a dreadful service this is. As a generic site I'm sure it has its purpose, basically built on common sense and maybe practical if you don't need to speak to your GP, but is a substandard product if you need to speak to your GP. I have no idea how accessible it is for someone with difficulties, but that's another point entirely. I have used this twice now and having to go full circle only to call the GP again, which has taken a stressful hour to do the loop and explain myself and symptoms 3 times. all this does is push more people to 111 or A&E, this really has not been thought through, creating unintended consequences all round, stress, lack of advice and help and an impact on the NHS ultimately.

eConsult is by far the worst NHS program; it does not recognise simple basic symptoms such as Peripheral neuropathy' Peripheral neuropathy is an umbrella term for conditions that damage nerves of the peripheral nervous system. Neither does the programme provide any help.

Like most reviewers I turned to eConsult by need not desire. Hubby and I spent a fruitless 35 minutes on the 8 a.m. treadmill using two phones and the redial buttons only to be told when we did eventually make contact that there were no appointments available and to use eConsult. I explained to the receptionist I had Pernicious Anaemia and high blood pressure and really needed to talk to a doctor but was still told to go online. Either she doesn’t know about the small list of ailments this service covers on its rubbish system or she doesn’t care.
So, to the glories of eConsult. Firstly the ridiculous video which says you’ll wonder how you did without it, I wonder how we did with it!!
It was not easy to find the ‘start here’ button on my GP’s website and when I did find it I kind of wished I hadn’t. What ailment did I have? Ankle problem? Nope. Mouth ulcer? Nope (Really, would anyone in the universe go through this nonsense because of a mouth ulcer?) Leg problem? Nope. Pubic lice? (Shudder shudder) Anxiety? Yep but only since I came to this awful eConsult!
What to say was problem number one. There was nothing even close to PA or blood pressure. Headaches? Yep, got one now thanks to all this nonsense. So that where I started, and that’s where they started. How many days a week do you have a headache? How many hours in the day? Is it on the left or right? Does it hurt?? On and on and on, and then after about forty questions a nice little notice appeared, we can’t help you and you need to speak to someone today I’m informed, well that’s where I started a long long time ago.
So I rang my surgery and (after being on hold for 12 minutes) told the receptionist what had happened, but I didn’t get to quite finish my rant, she cut me off with yes it does that doesn’t it?
She kindly took my details over the phone, submitted an eConsult for me and I received an automated reply saying I would hear from the doctor by 6.30 the following day, either by text, email or phone.
I’m posting this at 7 o’clock. I think you can guess what didn’t happen.

Awful. My doctors surgery has moved exclusively to econsult meaning you can not simply call and ask for an appointment. Econsult is flawed and time consuming. First off you can only choose one illness, all the next questions are based off your first answer. There are multiple choice question which often do not have the answer you need to give as an option. Sometimes there are boxes to type an answer but there is not enough character space to give any detail. I ended up purposely answering b****cks. After completing the form which was a real chore I recieved a text for an appointment, when I arrived my appointment had been made with a nurse not a Dr, she had already diagnosed me based on the answers I had put on econsult, I explained I had lied because I was sick of the terrible platform but she didn't care, just proceeded to big up econsult, I hold her I won't use it again and she told me that the surgery is exclusively econsult now so use it or don't get an appointment. I also felt that I was only allowed to briefly discuss the issue I had put on econsult and no other issue. I really needed to see a GP to discuss other issues that are not suitable to discuss with a nurse and which she would not be able to deal with anyway. If you have multiple issues you would need to fill the form in multiple times. It's not even funny tbh and I am planning to complain to NHS England, my GP surgery and my MP. There have been petitions to parliament about the use of econsult but they have been rejected due to the fact it is not a government issue but down to the NHS, I hope I find a petition to them but if I don't perhaps when I have time I will start one myself. I rarely need the Dr and don't expect to be put through this rigmarole attempting to get an appointment.

Many common medical conditions, for example high or low blood pressure, are NOT listed when requesting an eConsult, so you have to find another unrelated condition and then answer many unrelated questions! This is a typical NHS incompetency!!