Unscheduled care can be described as: “NHS care which cannot reasonably be foreseen or planned in advance of contact with the relevant healthcare professional or is care which, unavoidably, is out with the core working period of NHS Scotland. It follows that such demand can occur at any time and that services to meet this demand must be available 24 hours a day.”
In the past the largest group of patients requiring unscheduled care tended to use one of the following routes:
advice from NHS 24
referral to the Out of Hours service via NHS 24
an urgent appointment with their GP
Service developments, implemented within community pharmacy, have led to pharmacies becoming an important access route for people requiring unscheduled care particularly over weekends and public holidays such service developments implemented by community pharmacy contractors include:
The National Patient Group Direction for the Urgent Supply of Repeat Medicines and Appliances
Community pharmacy direct referral to local Out-of-hours (OOH) services (this forms part of the Unscheduled Care PGD process)
NHS Pharmacy First Scotland
Community Pharmacy Scotland - Unscheduled Care
The NHS Lothian Unscheduled Care Service Professional-to-Professional contact number can be found in your Unscheduled Care folder in the pharmacy.
For further Unscheduled Care information including the current PGD, please click here.