‘If this is the service you give, you should be ashamed’

NHS24 has issued a string of apologies and pledges to investigate patients’ treatment over the last few months.

Complaints included hanging up on one woman recovering from breast cancer, failing to call patients back, delaying hospital admissions and not taking one patient seriously.

One 87-year-old man, whose wife suffered heavy bleeding after an operation on her leg, said: ‘If this the service you give people, you should be ashamed of yourselves.’

NHS 24 apologised to him on the Care Opinion website, where the man described how handlers said a nurse would visit within the hour – but failed to arrive. When he called back he was told the couple should make their own way to Edinburgh’s Western General.