Discussion:
Out of Hours covers the time from 6.30 pm to 8.00 am Monday to Friday, all day Saturday and Sunday, all public
holidays and all bank holidays.
At present, Applecross is covered by the local GP and her part time Associate. The GP covers two thirds of Out of
Hours, and the Associate one third.
Under the new system for Out of Hours proposed by NHS Highland, Applecross would be covered for the majority of the
time by the GP practices in Torridon or Lochcarron. For the remainder of the time, cover would be by the Applecross
GP and Associate who would be responsible for Torridon and Lochcarron, as well as the Applecross practice.
Applecross has no resident midwife, paramedic or practice nurse. The community nurse on call is not required to be
resident in Applecross and there is no resident police presence with a vehicle which could be used in an emergency.
It has been stated by NHS Highland that 45 minutes is the acceptable time for the GP to get from his/her base to the
neighbouring surgery or patient. This is not physically possible due to the geographical situation of Applecross.
It is very obvious that, under this new system, travelling times from GP to patient, for out of hours care, are excessive.
It will not always be possible for the patient to travel to their local surgery and, in such circumstances, the time
required for the on call doctor to reach patients from, for example, Diabeg or Kinlochewe is totally unacceptable.
One problem which may not be immediately obvious and not appreciated, is that of poor mobile 'phone reception in the area.
Any GP travelling over the Bealach na Ba or the coast road is out of mobile 'phone reception for much of the route;
therefore the GP could not raise an alert if they were being delayed by road conditions, nor could they raise the alarm
if they themselves were involved in a collision or had gone off the road.
This all leads to one logical conclusion - that Applecross should have a resident GP who provides Out of Hours cover,
with appropriate support from the NHS Primary Care organisation.
Conclusion
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