News / NHS vows to act on Lerwick’s health centre woes
ALMOST four fifths of people who use Lerwick Health Centre are not happy with the length of time it takes to get seen by a doctor, according to an extensive survey of patients.
Over 900 people – nearly a tenth of the population served by the troubled South Road medical practice – responded to the local public partnership forum’s questions.
Some 78 per cent of respondents said they were unhappy with the appointments system. More than half had waited a fortnight or more for pre-booked appointments, while among those who had used so-called “walk-in” clinics, 80 per cent had faced a wait of between one and three hours before seeing a GP.
Forum chairman Harold Massie said patients felt the options of either waiting two or three weeks to see a GP or sitting for hours waiting to be seen on a same-day “walk-in clinic” were unacceptable.
The survey’s findings, presented to the NHS Shetland board in Lerwick Town Hall on Tuesday morning, are unlikely to come as a huge surprise to local health officials who have grappled unsuccessfully with the problem for much of the past decade.
Afterwards its chairman Ian Kinniburgh said he accepted that there was “clearly a lot of dissatisfaction among the public with the appointments system, and we need to try and fix this”.
A working group, including Massie and other members of the public participation forum, has been set up to examine various options. It will report back to the board in February.
Kinniburgh said: “The initial focus will be on trying to improve immediate access by using a system that is more flexible and doesn’t result in folk being expected to give up large chunks of time in order to gain access [to a doctor or nurse].”
Massie told BBC Radio Shetland there was a great deal of frustration at the lengthy waits and what is perceived to be an inefficient service.
“The rumour on the street was true,” he said, “that people are not satisfied. Waiting two and three weeks for appointments with a doctor, a named doctor particularly, is not acceptable.
“It’s very frustrating, and people felt they were being pushed towards the walk-in clinic. And then they go and sit there for hours on end.”
Among the suggestions thrown up by patients are looking at “what it’s like to sit around in that waiting room” and what might be done to improve the centre.
Privacy was another worry; patients are “very concerned about being overheard talking to the receptionist”, especially in such a small community.
Fundamentally, what town residents want is to be able to get appointments more quickly and at more convenient times.
Massie said: “People were having to take long times off work, were having problems with childcare, and so what we’ve asked is [to see if] there is some way of changing the structure so there are more appointments, say, in the evenings or weekends.”
Kinniburgh said a “fairly tight timescale” had been set to see if the health board could find ways of improving the situation.
He stressed that, while the appointments system is not to the public’s liking, he felt patients were generally very happy with the quality of treatment from the health centre’s staff.
“I don’t think we get significant dissatisfaction with the actual service from GPs, from nursing staff, nurse practitioners, the reception staff – they are all doing the very best they can.”
Kinniburgh pointed out that NHS Shetland was still meeting its government-set target of ensuring people can access a GP within 48 hours – though he accepted that “we do it in a way that’s clearly very unpopular with a lot of people”.
Many of those surveyed expressed a desire to have a regular GP – harking back to the lost era of the family doctor.
But Kinniburgh pointed out that since doctors’ contracts were renegotiated, patients have been registered with the practice rather than with a specific GP. Patients can still request a specific doctor, but that is likely to increase the time they must wait.
Board member and SIC convener Malcolm Bell said he felt the solution “lies between managing expectation and managing our resources”.
Bell said it would be wrong to compare the town’s health centre to rural surgies throughout Shetland where “old fashioned-style GP services” are still the order of the day.
“Lerwick people will always suffer in comparison to the standards which country practices are able to deliver.”
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