Mull group votes no confidence in ambulance cover

ROSS of Mull residents have no confidence in the island’s ambulance cover, according to a vote held at a public meeting with the Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS) and NHS Highland.

Seventy residents crowded into Bunessan Hall on Monday to voice their frustrations and fears about Mull’s medical emergency response times, before further question and answer sessions in Craignure, Tobermory and Dervaig.

‘Take it back to [health minister] Shona Robison that the community has no confidence in the ambulance service,’ declared Argyll and Bute Councillor Mary-Jean Devon from Tobermory.

Beforehand, Ross of Mull and Iona Patient Participation Group campaigners had decked the hall with banners saying ‘ we do not feel safe’, ‘listen to us’, together with a nine-point ‘ we need...’ list, with ‘resident GP’, ‘integrated emergency transport’ and a ‘ resident practice nurse’ topping the list.

On the tables lay Mull and Iona Medical Group leaflets describing an integrated ‘ hub and spoke’ model for primary care services, with ‘spoke’ GP practices in Salen, Tobermory, Iona and the Ross of Mull, and an out- of-hours GP based at the community hospital ‘hub’ in Craignure.

The SAS, meanwhile, is based wherever duty paramedics live.

Resident Janet Schofield began: ‘Our problem is fitting this model with the geography of Mull.

‘I don’t think it’s going to work in real life.’

Another added: ‘People here don’t feel safe because they will not get out- of-hours emergency care within an hour.’

Anne Baxter asked: ‘ There will be one doctor on call for Mull and Iona at night and out of hours? Is this correct?’

‘ Yes,’ replied Dr Richard Wilson, Primary Care Clinical Lead for the Oban, Lorn and Isles Locality, to gasps.

Dr Wilson and SAS managers Andy Brady and Kenny McFadzean presented examples of how the model would best respond to medical emergencies.

Dr Wilson told the meeting: ‘ We’re trying to make sure there is a clinically proper answer to each scenario.’

But a resident asked: ‘If someone has a stroke in Bunessan, what’s your time estimate before someone who is medically qualified turns up at your door?’

‘Thirty-five minutes,’ Mr Brady replied, to laughter.

During the meeting Councillor Devon said there had been five 999 calls within a couple of hours of each other.

The latest incident was three weeks ago when an ambulance took an hour to get to a 5am call from Bunessan and then took two hours to get to a second call in Tobermory at 7am.

‘According to SAS stats it never, ever happens,’ Councillor Devon said. ‘ Your statistics do not reflect what is happening here.’

Anne Baxter asked the hall: ‘ Who doesn’t feel safe with the ambulance cover that’s being proposed?’ Almost everyone raised their hands.

Councillor Devon explained that a year ago residents had voted 81 per cent in favour of a ‘community option’ for healthcare, proposed in a two- day ‘options appraisal’ with the SAS and NHS Highland.

‘At the end of day one the community option was way ahead,’ she said.

‘Then on day two an SAS accountant said it would cost £200,000 more. We discovered afterwards these were flawed figures.

‘[ Health minister] Shona Robison asked how we had an option there that we hadn’t asked for.

‘It was there as a baseline, because it had the highest risk and the lowest benefit. And what have we got? [ The option we didn’t ask for.] The decision was made on a flawed procedure. The community has no comfort, no trust.’

The health secretary’s press office told The Oban Times ‘a fresh mechanism for discussions’ was being finalised.