RECORD VIEW Buck stops with health bosses

NHS24 staff must be under huge pressure to field the thousands of extra calls resulting from A&E services being under siege and GPs surgeries not yet running at full capacity.

But almost 170,000 unanswered calls in three months is a shocking figure.

How many patients desperately in need of advice have gone without help? How many have suffered in agony because no one answered? We may never know the answers. But it is obvious that NHS24 was woefully unprepared for the avalanche of calls it faced as other health services were crippled by coronavirus.

We have already seen lengthy queues at accident and emergency departments where a lack of beds has led to a crisis at hospital front doors.

The A&E crisis spilled over into the ambulance service, with vehicles queued for hours at the front doors of hospitals while desperately ill people worsened or died waiting for paramedics to arrive.

And with GPs not able to see as many patients face to face, people only had one other choice – the NHS24 phoneline.

Health Secretary Humza Yousaf and health boards have been telling people not to turn up at A&E unless it is a life or death emergency.

Instead, they have instructed people to call NHS 24.

Many will have called not realising their condition was an actual emergency. That some of these desperately ill patients’ calls went unanswered is disgraceful.

The Scottish Government simply never put in the resources to match the massive demand they must surely have expected.

However many call handlers were on duty, it was obviously not nearly enough.

As always, NHS workers have performed heroics during the Covid crisis and NHS24 staff deserve great credit for doing their best in very trying circumstances.

But NHS bosses need to explain why so many calls went unanswered – and why more staff weren’t put in place to deal with the massive demand.