Senior GPs last night demanded that NHS24 be scrapped amid growing fears that Scottish patients’ lives were being put at risk by a failing service.
Doctors and patient groups warned that some patients who phoned the out-of-hours medical helpline were given disastrous advice and that NHS24’s £64 million funding would be better spent elsewhere.
“There is a a general feeling among doctors that NHS24 doesn’t do its core work well and is failing the country,” Gary Hamilton, a Glasgow GP, said. “It is too risk averse and too protocol driven. It also gives patients unrealistic expectations of when their case will be dealt with and increases demand on the health service out of hours.”
Dr Hamilton will present a proposal to end NHS24 at the annual conference of the Scottish Local Medical Committee, which represents the country’s GPs, on Thursday.
The same conference will hear an accusation that the Scottish government had no clear strategy for primary care services in the mid to long term. Dean Marshall, chairman of the Scottish General Practitioners’ Committee, said that he did not support the direction of NHS reform in England but added: “The problem we have suffered with for quite a few years is a dearth of policies and no clear strategy for primary care in Scotland.”
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Dr Marshall warned that Scotland was “stumbling along to our usual crisis-led NHS”. He said: “The risk then is what always happens to the NHS. We wait, everyone knows what the problem is, no one grasps the nettle to resolve it, then it appears and we do something knee-jerk which doesn’t solve it.”
A succession of tragic cases have raised concerns about the effectiveness of the helpline. A fatal accident inquiry found that the death of 20-month-old Kyle Brown from meningitis in 2006 might have been avoided if NHS24 had called an ambulance.
The service was also criticised in a joint fatal accident inquiry into the deaths of Shomi Miah, 17, of Aberdeen, who died after contracting meningitis in 2004, and Steven Wiseman, 30, of Laurencekirk, Kincardineshire, who died two months later of toxic shock.
Dr Hamilton, a member of the British Medical Association’s Glasgow local committee, runs an out-of-hours surgery where patients calling NHS24 are often sent for treatment. He said that some turn up with potentially life-threatening conditions, while others, with upset stomachs, could have stayed at home. “I have seen plenty of patients with chest pain, who are older men, obese and smokers, who have been sent by NHS24,” he said. “Why are they being sent to a GP when they should be sent straight to a hospital?
“Another recent example was an elderly gentleman who I thought might have had an abdominal aortic aneurism [a condition that can kill within minutes]. I sent him to hospital as a blue light ambulance case. But why was he not sent straight there from home?”
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Dr Hamilton added: “The implication of banning NHS24 is that there is an alternative. If we went back to doctors being the first contact, it would be someone who is able to take responsiblity.”
NHS24 was established ten years ago and is staffed by fully trained nurses with a minimum of two years post-graduate experience.
Margaret Watt, of the Scottish Patients Association, said that “at the very least” the service should be overhauled. “It is not providing patients with the service they have come to expect,” she said.
A Scottish Government spokeswoman said that NHS24 provided a high-quality service to about 1.5 million people who contact it every year.