Glasgow patients left with no out-of-hours units for one night
PATIENTS across Greater Glasgow and Clyde were left with NO out-of-hours GP units one night earlier this month.
The health board aims to have sites at Stobhill and Victoria hospital in Glasgow, the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley, and Inverclyde Royal Hospital in Greenock open from midnight to 8am seven days a week.
However, a spokeswoman confirmed that a lack of GPs forced them to cancel the service overnight at all four sites from January 8 into January 9.
She stressed that a home visiting service, which prioritises patients who are terminally ill or housebound remained in place, and that all patients who were triaged as needing a GP at home had been seen.
There was further disruption on January 9 when there were only enough staff to run GP OOH at the RAH in Paisley.
Evening OOH should also be available at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, Gartnavel Hospital, Easterhouse and Greenock health centres from 6pm, but was cancelled on January 8 due to staff shortages. Only the Vale of Leven hospital in West Dunbartonshire operated until 10pm.
It comes days after Health Secretary Jeane Freeman told our sister title The Herald that improving NHS GGC’s out of hours GP service was among her priorities, saying it “needs significant improvement”.
The Scottish Government intervened in June last year when it emerged that all but one of the five OOH units then operational had been forced to close over a weekend due to GP shortages.
Six months on, an NHS source said OOH departments were still “in crisis”. They said: “Morale is at rock bottom and patients are coming to harm.”
A second NHS source said blanket closures are becoming increasingly common, and that on occasions there has been only one GP available for home visits across the whole of Glasgow when the service is supposed to have four to serve east, west, north and south.
They said: “This is happening more frequently and the closures are not made public in advance.
“Often now barely half of the centres are open in the evening and we are experiencing more overnight closures of the facilities. There have been occasions where there was only one GP on shift for home visits in Glasgow.
“Inverclyde is often hardest hit, with patients having to travel into Glasgow. Basically the health board is not fulfilling its obligation to ensure fair and reasonable access to health care.”
The health board admitted last year that it was struggling to provide OOH cover due to “a lack of GPs willing to work the shifts”.
It is understood that NHS GGC is trying to recruit around 70 GPs to plug the shortfall.
Another anomaly is that NHS GGC is the only health board in Scotland which operates GP OOH as a walk-in service rather than appointments-based, making it more prone to queues.
A spokeswoman said they are “working towards” an appointments-based system.
A spokeswoman for NHS GGC said: “We are fully committed to ensuring that every patient across NHS GGC) who requires GP OOH care will get it. We have recently launched a campaign emphasising the need for patients to phone NHS 24 for an appointment with the GP OOH service and not just walk in as this causes unnecessary delays for other patients.”