ONE of the Lake District's most prominent business leaders has blasted a move to launch a new 'phone triage service' for tourists.

Maria Whitehead MBE, of Hawkshead Relish, has penned an open letter to the Lancashire and South Cumbria Integrated Care Board (ICB).

She criticised the decision to invest £170,000 into a new phone line for tourists to call GPs, including at Central Lakes Medical Group surgeries (CLMG), if they need a medical appointment.

Mrs Whitehead said the money would have been better spent trying to retain three GPs from the Ambleside and Hawskshead practices, who are set to leave after £73,000 of funding was withdrawn.

"So many areas of the community are being attacked at present and to have our GP’s handing back their contract and thus leaving us as a community without the continuity of care that we have fought so hard to protect is a real kick in the teeth to this village, Ambleside and the surrounding area," she wrote.

"Can I ask you to envisage a moment when you are enjoying a day out in the Lakes and one member of your family suddenly becomes acutely unwell, what do you do? Do you look around for a poster that tells you to ring a number?" 

The phone line will be run by Blackpool-based not-for-profit health provider Fylde Coast on behalf of CLMG.

A spokesman from the ICB said: "Utilisation of pre-existing telephone triage models offered economies of scale and the ability to rapidly mobilise this element of the pilot." 

READ MORE: Campaign launched to save Ambleside and Hawkshead Doctors surgeries following funding cuts

MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale Tim Farron, who has campaigned against the plans over the summer, said: "It absolutely beggars belief that the ICB has withdrawn funding from our local GP practices in Ambleside and Hawkshead in order to pay for a provider in Blackpool to run a telephone triage service for tourists."

Funding was granted to the Grange and Lakes Primary Care Network (PCN), which includes CLMG, by the ICB to run the tourist line pilot service, provide additional capacity within local GP practices for tourists requiring face-to-face care, a service to support local students, and a communications programme to inform tourists of the new triage service. 

Mrs Whitehead is a member of the Patient Participation Group (PPG) for CLMG.

She said that because visitors are more likely to go to the surgery itself rather than find the number for the new triage line, the medical staff in Hawkshead and Ambleside Surgeries will end up having to do more work once the GPs leave at the end of their contract.

The ICB said CLMG would have its GPs services replaced by another not-for-profit health provider, Cumbria Health on Call. The services will be delivered from January 1 2023 until March 31 2023 in the interim before the surgeries get new GPs. 

However, Mrs Whitehead mourned the loss of the GPs, and questioned how the ICB was going to get new ones.

"Who will these new GPs be when we are experiencing a national crisis, and where will they live with a chronic shortage of affordable homes in the area?," she wrote.