NHS Highland is to 'urgently' review and improve the telephone booking line for Covid boosters and flu vaccinations amid complaints of one-and-a-half hour waits.
The health board said it was currently receiving a high volume of calls from the public but recognised the challenges people were having getting through to an operator.
Members of the public vented their frustrations on the health board's facebook page after clinics and GP appointments were advertised but many were unable to book slots.
One woman said: "NHS Highland I've managed to get through 3 times this morning to be in a queue from 59,got down to position 8 twice to be asked to call back another time.
"Just got down to position 3 there to be told the same, why can you not just allocate appointments like last year? This is a ridiculous system!"
Another caller said: "When I eventually got through to the number I was number 77 in the queue. I stayed on for 1 hour 35 minutes only to find no appointments were available. That is quite scandalous!!"
NHS Highland said it working to improve communications with patients amid confusion over vaccination booking procedures. The board is to launch additional local clinics to help speed up the roll-out of the programme.
The board is one of only a few that is administering Covid boosters and flu vaccines separately to those over 70s in some areas.
The latest figures show 568,373 people in Scotland have had Covid booster vaccinations.
NHS Highland has one of the lowest rates for first dose vaccinations for children aged 12-15. Offical data shows 22.3% of children have received a jag, compared with 44.9% in Glasgow city, 58.6% in Aberdeen and 65.7% in East Lothian.
Pam Dudek, NHS Highland’s Chief Executive, said: “Everyone who is eligible will get their vaccination and we would ask for patience now as we roll out this extensive programme.
“We are also taking steps to urgently review and improve our telephone line recognising the high volume of calls received and some of the challenges people have had using it.”
"We are working on a schedule of more local clinics, recognising that for many centralised clinics is not a reasonable option.
“Our vaccination programme will run into January, with vulnerable groups being prioritised.
"We are working to a tight timescale with more vaccinations that need to be delivered than our previous programme, so the conditions are very different.
“GPs are not obliged to provide vaccination and do so contractually based on their own set of circumstances and workloads, so this does make for a variable programme of delivery.
"We absolutely need this blended approach to ensure that we, along with our general practice colleagues, are able to cover the breadth of health and care requirements alongside the vaccination programme. We understand how confusing this can be for people and are taking measures to try to ensure our messages are clear and tailored to your local area."
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 here