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Plea as public ignore out of hours call-ahead model |
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Scotland’s largest health board says the safety of Out of Hours services is being put at risk by patients turning up without an appointment.
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde is urging anyone needing care to call NHS24, rather than attempting to walk-in to Out of Hours centres.
In December the way patients should seek non-life-threatening care changed across Scotland, with Scots asked to call 111 instead of going to A&E.
Greater Glasgow and Clyde’s Out of Hours service moved to appointment-only in June 2020 as part of a wider remodelling of services that was intended to better manage footfall in the context of covid and reduce waiting times.
Architects of the wider redesign say it should mean patients are signposted to the most appropriate care for them, whether that is seeing a GP, nurse or advanced nurse practitioner or other health professional, or attending their local pharmacy.
In recent weeks though, the number of unscheduled walk-ins has increased across urgent care centres, ‘putting the system at risk by preventing clinicians from seeing patients who have gone through the appropriate channels’, according to NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde.
Pauline Burke, Advanced Nurse Practitioner at the GP Out of Hours service at The New Victoria Hospital in Glasgow, said:
“If you need urgent primary care, out of hours, you have to be allocated an appointment. We can’t accept walk-ins with no notice as this puts our staff’s and our patients’ safety at risk due to covid-19.
“This also causes disruption to the model which relies on people going through NHS24 first so that they can be appropriately managed and scheduled.
“We implemented the appointment model to improve the service and to ensure people who need to be seen out of hours are able to do so. It is also there to make sure if there’s a more appropriate service for the public to use, that they are referred on to that service, rather than putting unnecessary pressure on our out of hours staff.”
Read more: A&E call-ahead changes go live across Scotland; ‘Extreme caution’ urged over A&E call-ahead changes; Public asked to call ahead to stop A&E overcrowding
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