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Healthcare Shortfalls Prompt C'llr’s Call

A call has been made for all the political parties to join forces and work tirelessly to defend the ever-declining medical services in Highland Perthshire.

Highland Perthshire Ward  C’llr Ian Campbell said “ I am appalled that in the year since I was elected to represent Highland Perthshire there seems to have been nothing but cutbacks and declining medical provision for the area. First of all we saw the reduction in ambulance numbers from two to one with all the attendant risks that poses to the local community.

“It is fairly obvious if the one ambulance on stand by is called to a major incident and then another emergency call comes from a different part of Highland Perthshire that second call has higher patient risk because of the greater geography that has to be covered. This situation would not be allowed to happen in Edinburgh, Glasgow or Dundee, yet the Scottish Ambulance Service see it as perfectly good provision in Highland Perthshire.”

Noting that the recently published NHS Report on ‘Remote and Rural Healthcare’ suggested that the SAS should be ‘responsible for ensuring that robust and responsive local community emergency response models are developed’ the councillor said:  “I do not believe that the current model is either robust or sufficiently responsive.”

Service Decline

“I recently visited the ambulance station at Pitlochry and whilst talking to the staff I was told that what used to be ‘a platinum service is now rapidly approaching bronze’.

“I was also dismayed to discover that if ambulance personnel were on designated meal breaks then emergency ambulance cover had to be provided from other stations. I am amazed that we run an emergency service like this and I am concerned that the staff themselves found this distressing,” he remarked.

In the report on ‘Remote and Rural Healthcare’ there is much use of the phrase “community resilience” which, when explored, means ways in which local people and communities can support each other in a health emergency till expert care arrives. A good example would be the ‘first responder’ scheme currently used in and around Killin.

Commenting on this the councillor said: “Essentially this requires a local ‘first aider’ to keep you going till a paramedic arrives. The cynic in me wonders if this is helpful in assisting the SAS in saving the £1.6M required by the last administration in Holyrood and, incidentally, not changed in any way by the current administration.”

Out-of-Hours

“The other issue that is extremely concerning is the lack of ‘out of hours’ healthcare provision that now exists in the more remote areas of Highland Perthshire. I recently accompanied a delegation to Holyrood to lobby Murdo Fraser MSP to enlist his help and give some weight to the fight we must now undertake to improve our healthcare provision.

“The MSP has now lodged a number of questions with the Health Mininster and we await a response to those.The situation in Kinloch Rannoch is a classic example of the powers that be ignoring the wishes of the local population.

“It was well known that, when the previous doctor retired, one of the stated desires, in fact, the main requirement of local people was a GP service that undertook ‘out-of-hours’ provision. This has not happened and it is extremely worrying for many in the remoter parts of the county, particularly for the elderly and vulnerable.”

A Freedom of Information request has been lodged to try and discover why the wishes of the community were ignored by NHS Tayside. The outcome is still awaited.

C’llr Campbell continued: “I was also dismayed to see that NHS Tayside and the SAS are now considering  deploying the Rapid Response unit to Pitlochry which leaves those in the remoter areas even more vulnerable.

“I would echo Councillor Ken Lyall’s call that now is the time for all local politicians and the people of Highland Perthshire to stand together and to fight these creeping cutbacks to our health provision and to demand that the services provided are tailored to rural areas and not urban areas.

He concluded: “If we don’t stand together and lobby all those in authority then our local healthcare needs will be dictated to us, not by us.”