Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Secretary Ross Finnie will call for the 60th year of the NHS to be the beginning of a radical redesign in the delivery of community healthcare, with the focus on ensuring all elements of the NHS provide healthcare 24 hours a day.

Mr Finnie will mark the 60th anniversary of the National Health Service by visiting a GP at Glenburn Medical Practice in Paisley. Public Health spokesperson Jamie Stone MSP will visit Invergordon County Hospital, a rural healthcare facility and Communities spokesperson Jim Tolson will join an ambulance team at Dunfermline Ambulance Station.

Commenting ahead of the anniversary, Mr Finnie said:

“As the NHS celebrates its sixtieth birthday next month, the state of the health service will be as hotly debated as ever. Throughout the past six decades every Scot will have benefited from NHS services. There is no other institution that commands the degree of public pride and respect as the National Health Service.

“I believe that the NHS should stay true to its founding principles. This to me means a health service that works 24 hours to look after the health of all of our patients.

“As I visit the GP practice at Glenburn Health Centre, I hope to talk to GPs on the ground who are dealing with patients and working in the 21st century NHS. I know that there is a growing understanding at the top of the profession that the current arrangements for out-of-hours care are unsustainable.

“Liberal Democrats are calling for a full review of the way the NHS provides care in the community but we are not advocating a return to the dark days when GPs alone shouldered the burden of arduous on-call rotas.

“Instead of bullying doctors into providing limited services for extended hours, Ministers should be sitting round the table with doctors and representatives from other key health areas to plan the best way to provide a 24 hour care in the community.

“2008 must be the year individual patients regain 24 hour health care in their local community.”