about how it would work in the Highlands in particular.<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cThe locations for these community-based clinics have not yet been determined but it\u2019s possible that a remote or rural area could be selected as one of the pilot sites,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
“While the concept of walk-in services may appear convenient to some people, evidence from elsewhere suggests that care through this approach can be fragmented and does not necessarily reduce pressure on core GP services or lower the number of patients attending accident and emergency departments.<\/p>\n
“NHS Highland already operates Investigation and Treatment Room (ITR) services, delivered by community nursing teams, which allows patients to undergo tests requested by secondary care specialists closer to home.<\/p>\n
“As this walk-in primary care pilot develops, it is essential to ensure that people living in remote, rural, and island communities are not disadvantaged. These areas already face significant challenges in recruiting healthcare staff and delivering services, which must be addressed.<\/p>\n
\u201cUltimately, patients should not be expected to travel long distances to access the care they need.”<\/p>\n
Health secretary Neil Gray said: \u201cImproving access to primary care and shifting more care into the community is central for this government<\/p>\n
\u201cAs part of this, we are taking forward new and innovative ways to improve access to primary care, including the benefits of local walk-in GP clinics.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese will be in addition to core GP services and will offer additional flexibility for patients. These will be designed in collaboration with NHS boards, GPs and other partners to ensure they strengthen existing services.\u201d<\/p>\n
Do you want to respond to this article? If so, click here<\/a> to submit your thoughts and they may be published in print. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Highland GP Dr Chris Williams, he is also vice chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216379,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[7840,102,2960,913,19490,229,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-216378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-community","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-latest-news","tag-nairnshire","tag-politics","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216378\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}