Campaigners blast NHS for ‘needless waste’
Campaigning residents claiming NHS Highland is spending £3,400 a week on GP locums are calling on health minister Jeane Freeman to stop the ‘needless waste’.
At two ‘very useful’ public meetings in Bunessan and on Iona, residents accused NHS Highland bosses of failing to communicate with them over controversial plans to create a single island-wide surgery.
The Bunessan surgery community want their own resident GP so they can have continuity of care, rather than rely on a string of locums. They say a GP who knows his or her patients’ histories would also avoid needless hospital appointments, reducing costs and pressures higher up the NHS chain.
One of the leading campaigners, Jonathan Knight, said at last week’s meetings, attended by more than 30 people, there was ‘general dismay’ at the lack of action by NHS Highland and at their ‘complete failure to communicate with residents’.
The meeting heard how NHS Highland had not replied to a letter from Mr Knight informing them of a suitable doctor wanting to apply for the post of Bunessan GP. People at the meetings also heard how the authority was now out of time responding to a formal complaint Mr Knight made after not hearing back from them about his first letter.
‘It was agreed that I should take the complaint to the next stage and it was generally agreed that NHS Highland is a dysfunctional organisation,’ Mr Knight reported back to The Oban Times.
‘It was also agreed that I should now alert Health Minister Jeane Freeman to the situation in which £3,400 per week is being needlessly wasted through use of locums and that the continuity of the GP patient relationship which is so valued by residents has been lost and adds to the strain on emergency departments and appointments with consultants,’ he said.
A spokesperson for NHS Highland said: ‘We are working closely with the local communities across Mull and Iona to prepare a marketing strategy to help with our GP recruitment campaign and our aim is to implement this strategy in January 2019.’