Out of Hours

There is a GP available for urgent calls 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

If the practice is closed, then when you call you will either get an answering machine message telling you how to contact the on-call doctor or the call will go straight through to NHS24.

NHS24 Highland Hub can contact the on-call doctor for you.

Weeknight cover is provided by:

• Dr Robbie Coull, Strachur
• Dr Jurgen Tittmar, Strachur
• Dr Alida Pettie, Tighnabruaich
• Dr Peter Von Kaehne, Lochgoilhead
• Dr Annette McCulloch, Lochgoilhead

and two Rural Practitioners that work for Highland Health Board who provide cover on Monday nights.

Weekend cover is currently provided by:

• Dr Ash Bhopal, Strachur
• Dr Fiona Mauritzen, Tighnabruaich

So there is always a GP available in the Strachur / Tighnabruaich / Lochgoilhead area that you can speak to or see if you need to over the weekend.  The GP can meet you at the Strachur Out of Hours Center or can provide a home visit if you need one.

Out of Hours GP cover for Cowal is currently under review by Highland Health Board's 24/7 Committee.



 

If you are unable to contact the
surgery for any reason:
in dire emergency dial 999 and ask for ambulance
or for urgent assistance call NHS 24 on 08454 24 24 24

Telephone Issues

 

Like many others in Strachur, we continue to struggle with poor access to telephone lines.  This can cause problems for patients trying to contact the practice.

We've always had issues with intermittent outages to our telephone lines and broadband.  However, the problem became worse after the storm in the spring of 2025.  

We have three incoming telephone lines to our internal exchange in the practice.  However, we often find that people dialling into the practice can't connect.  Sometimes people connect but we can't hear them.  Sometimes we can't get an outside line.  Other times we get an outside line but the person we dial can't hear us or we can't hear them.  

The issue is due to poor telecoms infrastructure in the Strachur area and is something that is beyond the control of the practice. 

We've been working for around six months with our current telecom provider, BT, and a new telecom provider to try to find solutions but nothing they do seems to work.  We have tried switching to VOIP from copper cables but we can't get any broadband signal on the ports that we've had installed in the practice.  Our installer works nationally and says he's never seen this before in his career.  We're also lucky as one of our receptionists used to be a local telecom engineer and understands the system well. 

It's very frustrating.  We are looking now at installing a cellular system which uses the mobile signal, but as patients will be aware the mobile signals are also unreliable in our area.  Another alternative is to use an orbital system such as Starlink, and I know at least one other business in the area is doing this.  However, there are concerns about using this for voice calls for a medical practice.  

We will continue to try to improve the quality of the system, although the root problem - poor infrastructure - is beyond our control.