Highland health bosses back £12M new hospital for Aviemore
Politicians have promised radically improved public transport links in the strath if a single hospital in Aviemore is to replace the ageing Ian Charles and St Vincent’s facilities in Grantown and Kingussie.
The issue dominated an NHS Highland debate which ended with unanimous support for a new £12 million Aviemore hospital that would ultimately render the two existing facilities redundant.
A formal three-month public consultation on the proposal to modernise and broaden the strath’s health and care services is expected to follow at the end of this month.
The new hospital would provide a comprehensive range of services including in-patient beds, out-of-hours, accident and emergency and outpatient clinics.
Speaking after a harmonious 80-minute debate at the health board’s Inverness headquarters, Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch SNP MSP Dave Thompson told the ‘Strathy’: "This is a huge opportunity to develop state of the art, enhanced medical facilities in the strath."
He said the necessary finances for the construction work were guaranteed by the Scottish Government while acknowledging that co-ordinated transport, linking people with new health facilities, was "absolutely crucial".
He continued: "I wouldn’t support these proposals if I wasn’t certain that the transport part of it was going to be developed in parallel with it. It has to be and it is one of the things I will be keeping a close eye on as we move forward.
"It’s not just about the health facilities. It’s about enabling people to get to them."
Amid local concern about longer hospital journeys that some patients would inevitably face, NHS Highland chairman Garry Coutts urged communities to view things "in perspective".
He said: "We’ve got hundreds of communities the length and breadth of the Highlands who are already living far further away from the nearest hospital or nearest emergency facility and we manage our services on that basis.
"I can appreciate why people might have an element of concern. That’s what we want to hear about during the consultation."
Mr Coutts said he was delighted the exercise had reached its latest stage, but he was keen to emphasise that "no final decisions have been made".
Asked for an assurance that consultation would be more than a humouring exercise, he said: "Yes, absolutely."
