Health chiefs have been accused of putting lives at risk after unveiling plans for a controversial shake-up of out-of-hours medical cover across the Highlands.
Local NHS bosses want to slash the number of north communities which receive emergency cover from a nearby GP from 22 to 17.
The move has been proposed along with other “urgent” changes because of chronic staff shortages and “spiralling” costs.
Under the plans, the current doctor-led service will become “multi-disciplinary” across the Highlands, with nurses and paramedics responding in more cases.
And there will no longer be locally-based out-of-hours GP cover in Lochaline in Morvern, Glenelg in Lochalsh, Applecross in Wester Ross, and Lochinver, Armadale and Tongue in Sutherland.
The Inner Moray Firth area of Inverness and Easter Ross is also described as one of those currently facing the “greatest needs”, with contingency plans required “most weeks”.
To plug the gaps and deliver the shake-up, new nursing and other staff will have to be recruited and be based at Inverness, Thurso, Golspie, Aviemore, Wester Ross, West Sutherland and Ardnamurchan.
The Scottish Government is providing funding to NHS Highland to enable “testing” of the changes, which are in line with the recommendations made in a national report by Sir Lewis Ritchie.
Health board members, who will discuss the plan at a meeting next week, have been told it will make the service “more resilient” and make “better use of the available resource”.
However, major concerns were raised last night that the overhaul could lead to delays in people receiving life-saving treatment.
Jim Johnston, secretary of Bettyhill, Strathnaver and Altnaharra Community Council, said the area would be impacted by the move to end local cover in Armadale and Tongue, with the service to be provided from Thurso instead.
“It seems an extraordinary proposal. This is very important and potentially life-threatening,” he said.
“It would be a very worrying prospect for local people in Bettyhill to be further away from cover. It’s a long way, about 34 miles, from Thurso to Bettyhill.”
At Glenelg, the out-of hours cover could be provided from Broadford on Skye in the future.
Glenelg and Arnisdale Community Council chairman John Angus Maclean said the issue was due to be discussed at a public meeting tomorrow night.
“There is considerable concern in the community about this. If they are going to cut out-of-hours then that really is a big thing.
“We’re so far away it’s going to take them ages to get here.”
A quarter of out-of-hours doctor cover in Scotland is current delivered in the Highlands, and report to the health board outlined how it had become “increasingly challenging” to attract Highland GPs and that the rotas had been difficult to fill.
It added: “It has been necessary to move to contingency on several occasions in recent months due to staffing shortages and the costs have spiralled due to the necessity to employ locums to cover so many centres and the budgets are overspent.”
The report concluded: “The current model of providing care in the out of hours period is not sustainable both from a staffing and cost perspective.
“The need for change in now pressing and the proposed new model is believed to be more resilient and makes better use of the available resource.”
NHS Highland also highlighted changes that have already been made which it said had resulted in “more sustainable provision”.
Examples included the Small Isles, where there was previously a resident GP on one island and subsequently a vacant practice staffed by a series of locum doctors.
In the model that has now been introduced on the islands, scheduled care is provided by visiting GPs from Skye, a multi-disciplinary team based in Mallaig, and a team of islanders who have been recruited as health and social care support workers.
