Where exactly are the three Urgent Care Service Fife (UCSF) centres located and what are their current opening hours?

1. Where the three UCSF centres are located, in plain terms

The three Urgent Care Service Fife centres are sited within Queen Margaret Hospital, Victoria Hospital and St Andrews Community Hospital — locations named explicitly by NHS Fife as the sites where UCSF delivers face‑to‑face urgent care for Fife and Kinross patients when GP surgeries are closed ^{[1] [2]}. NHS Fife presents this configuration as a network intended to cover the county geographically rather than a single central walk‑in clinic, and lists these hospitals as the physical venues for urgent care appointments following NHS24 triage ^{[1] [2]}.

2. How patients are expected to access those centres (why “where” is tied to process)

Patients cannot simply walk into UCSF centres; NHS Fife instructs that anyone needing urgent care when a GP is closed must contact NHS24 on 111, where a call handler and Nurse Advisor will triage and, if appropriate, transfer the case electronically to the UCSF hub to arrange an appointment or referral to a local clinician ^{[1] [4]}. NHS Fife reiterates that the urgent care centres “can only be accessed through a direct referral,” making physical location meaningful only after NHS24 assessment and allocation ^[2].

3. Opening hours: what is known, and where the evidence stops

NHS Fife frames UCSF coverage as “out‑of‑hours,” i.e., when GP practices are generally closed — the publicly stated window is broadly the hours between approximately 6pm and 8am on weekdays, plus weekends and public holidays — and patients are therefore advised to use NHS24 day or night ^[2]. The NHS Fife service pages and the Fife Health & Social Care listings emphasize 111 as the entry point and warn that opening times may differ from normal due to workforce pressures; however, none of the provided pages publish minute‑by‑minute daily opening schedules for the three urgent care sites, so there is no authoritative source here for fixed start/stop times by day or site ^{[1] [3]}.

4. Practical implications and the broader context

The model emphasises telephone triage and referral to target resources, a deliberate policy choice that NHS information sources present as steering people to “right care, right place” and protecting A&E capacity ^{[5] [2]}. This creates a potential friction point for people expecting traditional walk‑in access; NHS Fife’s public messaging therefore prioritises NHS24 as the first call ^{[1] [4]}. It also means callers should expect variable local arrangements: the service is county‑wide, routed through the Urgent Care Hub, and subject to operational change if staffing or demand requires it ^{[1] [3]}.

5. What remains unclear and where to go next for precise times

Because the NHS Fife pages confirm locations and the referral pathway but do not publish fixed, current daily opening hours for each site within the materials supplied, a caller seeking exact, up‑to‑the‑minute opening times must use NHS24 on 111 or consult NHS Fife directly — the service documentation itself explicitly channels users to NHS24 for access and notes that hours may be different at times of workforce pressure ^{[1] [2] [3]}. The reporting reviewed does not include an up‑to‑date timetable by site, so asserting definitive hourly schedules would exceed what these sources provide.