Practice news
Upcoming events, changes to the practice or interesting health related news articles will be posted here. If you would like to see any of the practice newsletters that we have published please click here. There is also a live news feed from the health pages of the BBC on the right, click on any story that interests you for further information.
PPG meeting and newsletter.
September 16th, 2013 by Dr Wheeler.The North Uist patient participation group has had two meetings in the last few months. The minutes from May can be downloaded from here. Minutes from the most recent meeting will be available in due course. We recently met with Carmen Morrison from the Scottish health council who gave us some useful insight into how health boards are meant to communicate service change to their users. She also hopes to act as a liaison between different PPGs in the Western Isles.
Our new newsletter is here.
And I have updated the practice info page to reflect our new PPG member – Peggy McPhee.
The Patient Participation Group now has its own facebook site – so feel free to join it at https://www.facebook.com/pages/North-Uist-Medical-Practice-Patient-Participation-Group/455452864568995
Thanks for all the community support at the recent pharmacy meeting. It was great to see a large, well informed crowd make its feelings clear.
Community pharmacy application questionnaire from the health board.
August 28th, 2013 by Dr Wheeler.The health board have now written to every household in North Uist and Benbecula asking for feedback regarding this pharmacy application.
I am hearing from a lot of patients concerns about how clear the wording is in this letter, and many are finding it difficult to know how to answer the questions either for themselves, or when helping elderly relatives.
It is important that you record your own experiences – but I hope I can clarify some of the questions for you and provide some guidance (if needed), as to how you can best make an impact if you feel that a pharmacy in Benbecula would not be desirable.
1 ‘Do the boundaries of the area within which the pharmacy premises are situated constitute an appropriate neighbourhood?’
The neighbourhood is the area that the pharmacy will provide prescriptions for. It has been defined as the ‘Isles of North Uist and Benbecula’.
It would be helpful to query whether this is an adequate description given that technically it doesn’t mention Baleshare, Grimsay or Berneray – are these places included? If not – why not, and what will happen to them?
This is also the section where it would be very helpful to outline in detail what the changes will mean for you personally regarding getting access to services. At present you can get your pills from Lochmaddy, Carinish, Bayhead or Berneray.
- How many extra miles will you need to drive to get medication from Balivanich?
- How much would this cost?
- Would you need to use public transport – if so how adequate is it?
2 ‘Is the current provision of NHS pharmaceutical Services within the neighbourhood adequate?’
This is a bit of a trick question and I am disappointed that the health board have not explained what is meant here,
The services you currently get in North Uist don’t count as ‘pharmaceutical services’ because these are defined as only being available from pharmacists.
As well as giving you pills, these services include… nicotine patches for smokers, reviewing your medication a few times a year, supplying contraception, and dealing with minor illnesses.
I hope you would agree that these are done already for you by the practice. If so – then it would be helpful to put in this section that although you don’t have access to a local pharmacist, you would prefer to keep getting these kinds of services from your GP. You could also mention if you regularly get things from local shops, online, or from relatives when you want to get pharmaceutical supplies and don’t find this inconvenient.
3. ‘If the current provision is not adequate will the application secure an adequate provision of services in the neighbourhood.’
They are asking here how good a service you would expect to get from the pharmacy if it opened.
You might like to comment that the area covered is so large (over 400 km2) that there are concerns at how viable it will be for them to provide a delivery service. You may also have concerns at the security or size of the proposed shop in Balivanich (in the area of the current sports shop).
You may be worried at what might happen if the business opens but then closes after a few months / years if they don’t make enough money. How would we cope then?
It would also be useful to think about how adequate a service this would be in certain situations. For example – if you see a doctor at 5:30 in Lochmaddy and are given a prescription… how are you going to get it that day?
‘Please enter any other comments in the space below.’
This would be the place to mention how the loss of local doctors / practice staff might be of concern to you. There are potential issues with finding it harder to get routine appointments, the knock on effects that loss of staff will have for running out of hours care / the hospital, the social impact of people losing jobs in a remote community, the increased costs and inconvenience that people will face from having to travel so far for services, the environmental impact that this might have. Etc.
At the end of the day it is an opportunity for you to make any of your feelings known – but if you want to make an impact you need to focus on the subjects I have outlined above. These are the topics within which the legislation gives us some room to manoeuvre if enough people raise them as concerns.
It is very important that you put pen to paper and send these letters to the health board. If we are to argue that a pharmacy is not necessary or desirable here we need the weight of public opinion behind us.
They lied to us.
August 2nd, 2013 by Dr Wheeler.Most of you will already have heard the shocking news this week that the pharmacy application in Benbecula has also targeted North Uist – contrary to promises made in the previous weeks.
Just days before the local community council meeting the pharmacy applicant had gone on the record saying that North Uist was not part of their plans. They used this as their excuse for not coming to the meeting itself as the proposed new venture would apparently not affect us at all.
This was reported on BBC Alba and BBC Reporting Scotland as well as local newspapers… and understandably led to some sighs of relief on our Island.
I have now seen the actual application and can barely believe how it is presented. They have asked for the islands of North Uist and Benbecula as their catchment area – somehow missing the point that Grimsay,Baleshare and Berneray are separate islands! They have then attached a map of this proposed catchment area… missing out a chunk of Berneray – but including a large part of South Uist!
In their application they are meant to outline what services are currently available in the area they are looking at…. so they proceed to list the opening times of Griminish surgery and details of the service that they run there without a single word about North Uist Medical practice. It isn’t entirely clear that they understand that we are different entities.
The overall feel is of an application set out for taking over Benbecula…. with the words ‘North Uist’ tacked on at the end as an ill thought out last minute change.
Just to be clear (and contrary I understand to statements they have made locally elsewhere) no representative from the proposed pharmacy has ever contacted North Uist Medical Practice in any way up till this point to discuss their plans.
I was asked to present a viewpoint in The Scotsman newspaper (online here), and I know lots of you are following the facebook page put up by Dr Dawson in Benbecula.
Now is the time to write directly to the health board.
You need to write to
Christine McKee
Primary Care Manager
NHS Western Isles
Health Centre
Springfield Road
Stornoway
Isle of Lewis HS1 2PS
Telephone: 01851 763321
You can write your own letter, or just print out the standard letter that I have made and sign it… or download my standard letter and adapt it to your own experience.
Unfortunately the regulations don’t really take account of how pharmacy openings can make your GP surgery lose staff / reduce appointments / limit services available so there isn’t much point talking about this too much.
Things that would be helpful though relate to convenience…. if a doctor visits you at home or at a branch surgery in Berneray / Carinish or Bayhead in the future you will then need to find some way to get a prescription from Balivanich… how big a journey would this be for you? How easy would it be with public transport?
If you see the doctor in Lochmaddy you will have to then go to Balivanich to get your prescription – 18 miles there and then whatever distance back to your house.
To make an impact you also need to include a bit about your access to pharmaceutical services – that is why I have included this in my standard letter. Basically – you are able to currently get contraceptive advice, smoking cessation help, cardiovascular risk factor checks and reviews of your medication in the surgery… these are the kinds of things the pharmacy is trying to sell as an improvement to your current service. It would be helpful if you point out that it would be much more convenient for you to access these services in Lochmaddy and its branch clinics rather than in Balivanich.
Thanks for all the support so far and please get writing.
Great support from the community!
July 12th, 2013 by Dr Wheeler.Thank you very much for the great turnout at our public meeting last week. I was impressed with the level of understanding that seemed to be present, and very helpful questions / suggestions were in evidence all round.
You have probably seen and heard some items on BBC Alba / BBC Scotland / Radio Scotland – good to get some momentum going – let’s keep it up!
As discussed at the meeting, the next stage is to lobby our representatives. if you want to help, you can do so very easily if you are prepared to print off some letters and post them to support the cause.
You can do your own letter, or you can use one that I have prepared, or you can modify one of my letters to put in some personal insights. The main thing is that you get writing!
The most important thing just now is for us to lobby parliament for a change to the crazy regulations that exist just now which seem to allow public voices to be squashed in favour of predatory pharmacy applications.
Please write to the Minister for heatlh Alex Neil and our local MSP Alasdair Allan. Feel free to link them to / supply them with, the fact sheet below from the dispensing doctors association. This gives an excellent summary of the facts around the situation.
Dispensing doctors factsheet (would be great if you could print this off and send it along with your letter to the MSPs).
When we know that the application for the pharmacy is in with the health board and the public consultation starts you also need to write to Stornoway. Don’t send this letter just yet – but it should be going live in the next few weeks I would think.
Thank you again for your support – sending these three letters now could possibly help avert a lot of problems going into the future.
Pharmageddon – new chemist could wreck local health service.
June 29th, 2013 by Dr Wheeler.A few years ago I was interviewed by a medical journal about being a new GP on a remote island. I remember saying at the time that I really appreciated the kind of medicine I could practice here compared to how it works in other places, With a small list size and plenty of spare capacity I was finding that patients and their doctors here seemed to be generally happier and more satisfied with local health care than might be expected in ‘typical’ mainland surgeries. I want to stress this, because people need to be in no doubt that the proposed pharmacy for Benbecula could destroy this benign working model.
Basically – if the pharmacy opens it would close our dispensary. The inconvenience that this would create for patients getting prescriptions would be important – but this would be just one in a long line of issues, as it would also inevitably lead to a drastic reduction in the services that the practice will be able to provide.
Dr Dawson in Benbecula has created a fact sheet that you can see here. This has a lot of detail in it about how the new pharmacy application is progressing – but I will try to distil things down to a few key points – looking specifically at how North Uist could be affected.
1) I have been informally told that the pharmacy application is to serve from Berneray to Eriskay. If this is true – then a pharmacy on Benbecula will directly affect North Uist patients – not just those who live across the causeway potentially this one pharmacy will change beyond recognition all 3 medical practices on the islands.
2) North Uist medical practice isn’t really viable without dispensary rights. We only have 1400 patients – the money that such a small group attracts from the health board is not enough to fund the kind of practice we have at the moment.
3) If the practice is able to survive it will only be able to do so if it contracts quite severely. At the very least one doctor would be made redundant and possibly two reception / dispensing staff will have to go.
4) Life for those left behind will be considerably more difficult – it simply wouldn’t be possible to maintain current service levels. Decisions would need to be made nearer the time – but I would envisage that branch clinics would need to stop, and availability of GP appointments will be reduced significantly. From what I understand, when this happened in Millport on Cumbrae, locals found that they went from being able to see a doctor within 24-48 hours to needing to book at least a week ahead for routine appointments. The same would probably apply here.
5) If you come to see the doctor in North Uist in future you will need to then go all the way to Balivanich for your prescription. Repeat scripts will probably be OK as I presume there will be some sort of delivery service – but if you need something on the day then you potentially face quite a substantial round trip.
6) One selling point of pharmacies nowadays is the provision of pharmacist led care along the lines of smoking cessation, blood pressure checks, cholesterol and diabetic checks. These are already available from the practice however – so I don’t really see much benefit. it will basically be a similar service to what we already provide – but by less qualified personnel at a location that is less convenient. One way of looking at it is… there isn’t much point a pharmacist telling you that you have high blood pressure if you can’t see a doctor who is able to actually tell you what to do about it.
So in summary. Having a local chemist is usually a good thing – but when you live in a very remote location like ours you have to take the down sides as well as the benefits. In other communities where this has happened doctors surgeries have closed completely, in others services have been drastically reduced. Unfortunately, if a pharmacy opens, the local doctors surgeries aren’t allowed to compete with them, we are forced to close our dispensary – it’s the law. Follow these links to read about a couple of real life examples from the last couple of years,,,,, Scalloway, Millport.
As far as I can see, everyone loses – we lose jobs, we lose convenience, we end up with a less safe / less viable medical service that may not be sustainable at all going into the future.
Please come along to a public meeting of our patient participation group scheduled for 7:30pm on Wednesday the 3rd of July at Lochmaddy hall to ask questions / tell us what you think.
Dr Gerry Wheeler.
