Fears for Kingussie hospital despite NHS assurances
Fears for the future of St Vincent’s Hospital in Kingussie remain despite assurances from NHS Highland that it is safe from closure.
Nigel Small, general manager for the South East Highland Community Health Partnership – which is responsible for Badenoch and Strathspey – has stressed that there are no plans to close the community hospital.
Local people – who fought in the mid-1990s to save the hospital – became concerned when one of the wards closed for a fortnight due to staff sickness.
Lynwilg ward – where patients with dementia are cared for – reopened on Monday morning.
Mr Small has now told a meeting to set up a hospital support group that it would cost £3 million just to clear the hospital’s "backlog of maintenance".
He said the reality in the present economic climate was that the money was not available. New ways of managing hospital resources would have to be found in future.
Mr Small said he had seen that rumours on the "Strathy" website comments board claiming that the closure of the Lynwilg ward was a pretext for the hospital’s closure.
But he told the meeting attended by around 50 people: "I am not quite sure where people have got this from.
"I never said that, I never wrote that and I never intended that."
He said the Lynwilg ward had been closed purely because the staffing levels caused by the sickness did not provide the best quality of care.
This problem had been rectified after temporary staff were found, and the ward had reopened that day at 9am.
However, people at the meeting at Talla Nan Ros were still sceptical about NHS Highland’s intentions towards St Vincent’s.
Drummond Laidlaw, of Craig Dhu, Newtonmore, claimed the closure of the ward had been "the thin end of the wedge".
He said people were suspicious that it was going to result in the hospital’s closure.
Jean Filshie, a member of local group Protect Our Services Today (POST), told Mr Small: "We are in a situation where we don’t always trust you lot."
She added that NHS Highland had to communicate better with the public in future so rumours would not spread.
Mr Small told the meeting that £3 million would be needed to bring the hospital up to modern health care standards.
The heating system was antiquated, there was a problem with the roof, and a need to provide en-suite facilities for patients.
He insisted that he was lobbying NHS Highland for money for the "backlog of maintenance" because at the moment NHS Highland’s estate department was "papering over the cracks".
A room at the hospital had had to close recently when a chunk of plaster came out of the wall.
Mr Small added that there wasn’t a big pot of money to pay for the work which needed to be done. NHS Highland’s capital allocation had been cut from £20 million last year to just £5 million this financial year.
St Vincent’s is competing for cash with hospitals in other areas that were experiencing similar difficulties, he said.
Mr Small warned that while there was no threat to the hospital’s future in the short or medium term; the long-term future would be uncertain if fundamental repairs were not carried out.
Angela Gilmour, of Orchard Court in Kingussie, said she feared the hospital would go the way of the town’s Highland Folk Museum and courthouse, whereby the public would just be told the work cost too much so nothing would get done and the hospital would eventually have to close.
She added that the problems with the hospital’s roof had been known about for years, yet nothing had been done.
Speaking after the meeting, the Rev Helen Cook, who had chaired it, said many people were unsatisfied by what they had heard, given NHS Highland’s track record on St Vincent’s.
She commented: "There is huge community disappointment at the lack of development at the hospital.
"Promises made by NHS Highland on the last few showdowns with them have not materialised; all we have seen is retractions, and they have got something to answer for."
There were plans to close St Vincent’s Hospital in 1995, but the NHS did not go ahead after a campaign by locals which culminated in a turn-out of hundreds of protesters at the Victoria Hall in Kingussie.
