Rannoch & Tummel OOH Latest

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Rannoch & Tummel OOH Latest

On Monday 5 June, William Miller and Ken Barley from Rannoch and Tummel Community Council, accompanied by MSP John Swinney, met with the Chairman of NHS Tayside, Peter Bates and Dr Andrew Russell, Director of Primary Care at NHS Tayside.

The out of hours service has recently changed so that instead of receiving a service from the local GP, local people are directed to the NHS 24 telephone service and care often has to come from Pitlochry or Aberfeldy.

After the meeting, John Swinney said: “We had a very frank discussion with Mr Bates regarding the revised arrangements for Out of Hours Health Care cover in the Rannoch and Tummel area.

“We made it very clear to Mr Bates that the community does not have confidence in the ability of the new service to deal with emergency situations in the area within a credible time period.

It is crystal clear that anyone requiring medical treatment in an emergency situation must be attended to very swiftly. The earliest any emergency cover could now reach Rannoch and Tummel is 40 minutes compared to a previous arrangement when an on-call GP located in Kinloch Rannoch could reach an individual in just a few minutes.

“While Mr Bates was sympathetic to the position he made clear that the NHS Appeals Panel had over-ruled the case put forward by NHS Tayside to prevent the local GP from opting out of 24 hour cover. He made clear that in these circumstances the Board had to put in place a credible and safe out of hours service. He believed this had been put in place but he recognised that public confidence had to be built in the system.

Diminution of Service

“While I appreciate the efforts that have gone in to create a credible out of hours service, I remain deeply dissatisfied with what is proposed. It is clearly a diminution of the health care service the public have experienced in the Rannoch and Tummel area.

“Mr Bates has agreed to provide me with information on a monthly basis about call outs in the Rannoch and Tummel area in order to try to build public confidence in the arrangements. I have also asked that members of the local community and myself are given an opportunity to address the Board of NHS Tayside on this issue and Mr Bates has agreed to put that to the Board. I hope we will have an opportunity to do this shortly.

Ken Barley, of Rannoch and Tummel Community Council, said: “We had a useful meeting with Mr Bates but remain deeply concerned that these arrangements represent a decline in the quality and range of health care in the Rannoch and Tummel area.

“We hope to have the opportunity to raise our case directly with NHS Tayside. We also hope our MSP will be able to raise the flawed appeals process with the Health Minister. The people of Rannoch and Tummel want a credible out of hours service and we currently are not receiving one.”