 MORE than 10,000 calls to a new doctors' out-of-hours service went unanswered in just one day. The pressure led to three nurses quitting and doctors being forced to phone patients on their mobiles after incoming calls jammed the system. The shock findings are revealed in a damning report into the performance of a new out-of-hours service in Conwy and Denbighshire over Christmas. On one day over Christmas, just 731 out of 11,026 calls to the service were answered. Last year's festive period was the first bank holiday since the new out-ofhours service run by Morfa-Doc was introduced. GPs are no longer required to provide the services and the responsibility last year passed to local health boards. Conwy and Denbighshire appointed local company Morfa-Doc, based at Ysbyty Glan Clwyd, to run their services. The report, which will go before Denbighshire local health board members this Wednesday, shows the festive service was flooded with trivial calls about coughs, colds and repeat prescriptions as patients were unaware of the changes. It calls for changes before the Easter holiday, when GPs' surgeries will again be shut for four days. As Christmas Day and Boxing Day fell at the weekend last year, surgeries remained shut on Monday and Tuesday. Patients, unaware of this, continued to call and were automatically routed to Morfa-Doc. Both doctors and nurses were unable to phone patients back as all the available telephone lines were blocked with incoming calls. Eventually they had to resort to using mobile phones. | 
