The local NHS Board met today to take action on the recommendations put forward following the recent review into dispensary services across Aberdeenshire.
A press release has this evening been distributed with the decisions of the meeting, and the Board have rubber-stamped the decisions proposed for the Udny Station practise.
It reads as follows:

“The Board has approved the recommendation for Auchenblae, Rhynie and Udny Station practices to dispense to patients who have serious difficulty in accessing prescribed medicines and appliances from a pharmacy.
Regarding the Udny Station practice, the Aberdeen City Health and Social Care Partnership will review the AB23 area over the next six months.
They will report back to the Board at a later date to determine if there are patients living there who would have serious difficulty obtaining their medicines elsewhere.
This will run in parallel with the agreed 12 month implementation of the dispensing recommendations as agreed by the Board today.

Today’s decision follows a public consultation, which was the largest ever undertaken by NHS Grampian, after a review of dispensing by the Haddo Medical Group in 2015.
Around 1,300 people responded to the public consultation, with 200 attending public drop-in sessions, and more than 80 contributions or submissions to the review group.
NHS Grampian representation was present at meetings organised by Community Councils. Representatives from groups, organisations, elected public representatives and independent contractors to the NHS, such as community pharmacies or medical practices, were also invited to respond during the consultation to the question:      “If dispensing of medicines was not available at a specific GP practice in this review, do you think that patients who currently get, or are eligible to get, their medicines from these practices will have serious difficulty in getting their dispensed medicines from a community pharmacy?”
If the answer was yes, respondents were asked to describe what these difficulties would be and to whom they would apply.
The review only considered the ability of these practices to dispense and was not a review into the viability or future of any of these practices.
The Review Group considered each GP practice as a separate entity.”

Cllr Hassan stresses his disappointment that the dispensary cannot be used by all patients who attend the surgery, but is thankful that full closure (of which there was widespread worry may happen) is off the table for now.
He also hopes that the ‘open end’ that patients from the Whitecairns area may after fall fall into the “serious difficulty in access” area will lead to these patients resuming a full service from the practise.