Recent phone problems at the Surgery - further comment from Nairn Health Care Group

Barbara Graham, the practice manager, was on leave during the recent period where the phones were down at the Surgery. She apologises for the late response on her part and says:

"The phones were down in several areas of Nairn on Monday morning. Our switchboard is managed by NHS Highland, so they worked very hard with BT to try to address the problem promptly. The problem affected all of the building, not just the practice, as well as neighbouring houses. By lunchtime on Monday calls to the practice were being diverted to the Raigmore switchboard, but the volume of additional calls that the Raigmore team had to handle meant it was difficult for patients to get through. Local media were informed of the problem to try to alleviate frustrations for patients hoping to contact the surgery.

The problem continued into Tuesday and was eventually resolved at around 4pm. In the meantime, we were receiving calls on our internal switchboard via Raigmore.

It is my opinion that the diversion of our number to the Raigmore switchboard was unacceptably slow, and I, jointly with other departments within the building here at Nairn, will be raising with NHS Highland so they can in turn raise this with BT.

I would like to apologise to those patients who were inconvenienced by the problems that we encountered."