A health board will decide next week whether to reintroduce services after telling its GPs to only focus on the most serious cases as it creaked under the Omicron wave.
NHS Lanarkshire, which remains at the highest black alert level, said on January 11 that all GP surgeries would be moved to a “managed suspension of services”, and would only focus on the most urgent and time-critical care.
The “managed suspension” was set to last four weeks, as services in the area dealt with record coronavirus cases and high levels of staff absence.
The health board has now said it will review the situation.
Dr Sharon Russell, associate medical director of South Lanarkshire Health and Social Care Partnership, warned there “continues to be significant pressure across the whole system, including our acute hospitals, which are under sustained pressure”.
She added: “This is being kept under regular review, however, and we will again review the position next week to assess if our GPs are able to return to level one given that many of our community and other healthcare services are able to increase access to services that the GPs are required to access to operate at level one.”
Dr Russell said staffing levels are returning to normal following the Omicron wave, and a survey of GPs to “assess their readiness to restore services” has had good responses.
She added: “All our health services across Lanarkshire continue to prioritise those patients in need of urgent care.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel