NHS Louisa Jordan 'not a waste of resources' insists director

The Clinical Director of Operations at the NHS Louisa Jordan says she does not know if it will ever be used to treat a Coronavirus patient, but insists it is not been a waste of money.

It opened six months ago today (Monday), at a cost of almost £31 million and has so far cost £2.5million to run.

Since July 7th the emergency hospital at Glasgow's SEC has been used for staff training and outpatient appointments.

It has seen a total of 4000 patients since then and has helped to clear NHS Lanarkshire's orthopaedics waiting list. It is also providing services for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and NHS Ayrshire and Arran, including breast cancer screening, orthopaedics, CT scanning and dermatology.

Clinical Director of Operations Michelle Higgins said: "Absolutely this isn't a waste of resources. This was built from a national need. We had a pandemic and we had to build this, the Scottish Government needed it and we responded to that as we were ready.

"But then faced with closing that down, we consider what can we still be here for? Because we have to be here if there is a second wave, there might be a third wave. So actually, we still would need to be here anyway so to use it for this is absolutely no waste of time. And the patients that come here would absolutely say that as well.

"They have been glad to come up the a waiting list. And we're seeing patients that have been waiting a long time in a lot of pain to be seen. And we've been been able to help them to come and be seen, be treated and they've either gone away for surgery or have their treatment from physios here.

"So, I think the patients that we've seen and the impact that we've had, it certainly isn't a waste of time.

"For instance, Lanarkshire orthopaedics it actually almost recovered most of their backlog until we were locked locked down. And then they lost that but recently they sent us some data which shows that we're almost nearly completely recovering that again. So that's huge.

"It's a very uncertain picture out there at the moment. All we do know is that we will be ready to support the NHS if we have to. It's certainly a changing picture out there. And we we take our direction from the Scottish Government. And their direction is that we just need to always be ready."

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