Health bosses are accused of 'misleading' the public over hospitals decision
They will be reopened as community hubs
A local MSP is accusing health bosses of ignoring the public and then trying to mislead them over the future of four cottage hospitals in Dumfries and Galloway.
After a lengthy debate at DGRI yesterday, the Integration Joint Board decided to go with option three and only reopen Kirkcudbright, Moffat, Thornhill, and Newton Stewart as community hubs as they offered the “greatest benefits”.
Chair of the IJB Andy MacFarlane says Newton Stewart and Kirkcudbright was voted 9 against one, the opposer wanting the hybrid blend option.
Board members voted unanimously for option three at Moffat and Thornhill.
MacFarlane explains how the community hubs will be used:
"We will be able to provide services such as vaccinations and physiotherapy, as well as appointments that would usually only take about ten minutes at DGRI, so, the travel will be reduced."
It was brought up several times that although they recognised that members of the public wanted inpatient services to return, it would only cause “significant and detrimental effects” further down the line.
MacFarlane says it just wouldn't have been viable:
"They were undeliverable on the basis on finance, on the basis of staffing, on the basis of sustainability.
"If we had supported that option, somewhere down the line we would be making more difficult decisions on what services we would need to cut because we wouldn't have the staff or the funding to do that."
'Complete tatters'
Colin Smyth says this process has been misleading and the trust in Dumfries and Galloway Health and Social Care Partnership (DGHSP) is now in “complete tatters”.
He says, “This decision is the closure of the community hospitals and the shameful spin from the partnership that a hub with no beds is a hospital is an insult to the public’s intelligence and an attempt to mislead them.
“The public consultation made clear what patients, and staff wanted a return of inpatient services and that isn’t happening. Members of the IJB have treated the public with contempt by ignoring their own consultation.
“They have acted appallingly by pitching the concept of community hubs verses inpatient beds when you could have both.
“Astonishingly officials now claim that the options they consulted on that the public supported couldn’t have been delivered anyway.
“Those claims don’t stand up to scrutiny, but if they were true, it shows the partnership was dishonest by consulting on options they now say could never have happened.”
Our reporter Ruth Ridley asked Chair MacFarlane if this would be the final say on the hospitals would be used.
He responded, "It is at this time but clearly things change over time and if there were a significant change which meant that were was a greater need or there was a financial issue, then we would need to address it in that context."
'Pandemic was used as an excuse'
Communities were told that the four cottage hospitals would only be closed for Covid-related reasons but have since failed to reopen as the functioning facilities they were.
“Not a single covid patient went through the door and now we know the pandemic was used as an excuse to axe these hospitals. The partnership tells the public one thing and does the other and their reputation is in complete tatters.”
Smyth adds this will send a “shudder down the spines” of the remaining cottage hospitals in Annan, Lochmaben, Castle Douglas, and Langholm because he believes it is only a matter of time before they follow in the same footsteps.
“Officials openly argued at the IJB meeting that people in those community hospitals shouldn’t be there.
“It is now only a matter of time before those hospitals also close and while the partnership will deny this, the public now knows that they cannot believe a single assurance the partnership gives ever again.
“The people that shouldn’t be in hospital are the more than a hundred patients stuck in the main acute hospitals in Dumfries and Stranraer every night because the health and care partnership are presiding over a delayed discharge crisis which is costing the NHS far more than re-opening community hospitals.
“The claim that this level of crisis will be solved by the NHS simply using more private care homes at a time there is a shortage of beds and homes are closing is complete fantasy."
MacFarlane says if beds were returned to cottage hospitals, it would only solve the bed-blocking issue at DGRI for so long before they too became blocked.
“We should never forget that this is the same health and social care partnership who closed publicly run NHS dental practices across the region a few years ago, claiming there would be plenty of private dentists to provide NHS care.
“They got it badly wrong then and helped create the worst dental crisis in Scotland. They now want to create the same social care crisis by eventually axing all our community hospitals.”