Leanchoil sets September date for admissions

Leanchoil Hospital

LEANCHOIL Hospital will be reopened by September, albeit with a reduced number of beds.

The announcement was made by a senior NHS official at a well-attended public meeting about the future of the hospital, held at Forres Town Hall on Friday evening.

It has been closed to overnight patients since the turn of the year, and several patients have since been sent to other community hospitals for treatment.

Andrew Fowlie, manager of Moray Community Health and Social Care Partnership (MCHSCP), said: "The latest information we have is that Leanchoil is now scheduled to be open by September of this year."

Leanchoil was evac-uated on January 2 in the wake of an electrical fault, and was closed entirely. It has since re-opened for day clinics, but it still provides no overnight beds.

At the time of its closure, the hospital had 15 beds, but Mr Fowlie confirmed that this number would be reduced to nine when it reopens.

Addressing the meeting with the health board’s service planning lead, Elaine Brown, he said that once an NHS building is closed, it needs to be brought up to modern standards, and this could not be done to individual patient rooms in Leanchoil because of financial constraints.

Mr Fowlie also said that in the time the hospital has been closed, most people who would have been overnight patients had been treated in Forres,

but that a total of 11 people had been sent to other

community hospitals in Moray. "We were quite disappointed about that," he said.

Around 100 people attended the meeting, including several members of the hospital’s nursing staff. They were given the chance to put questions to Mr Fowlie and Ms Brown as well as Jamie Hogg, clinical lead of MCHSCP.

All three officials said that a debate needed to take place on the long-term future of Leanchoil.

The hospital is a listed building which means that there are restrictions on what can be done to its fabric.

The officials said that the full cost of bringing it up to modern standards would be more than £3 million. Details supplied to the ‘Gazette’ in March under Freedom of Information legislation estimated this cost at £1,870,250.

Forres’s ageing population also means that the town is likely to have more people in need of care in the future, and all three officials said that there would be a greater emphasis in the future on care outwith the hospital.

24-HOUR BASIS

Mr Fowlie added: "One thing we all agree on is that in Forres we require beds that people can stay in on a 24-hour basis, and that is something we will continue to deliver for the people of Forres."

Dr Hogg asked whether Leanchoil was the place where those beds should be.

Several members of the public asked why the building had been allowed to fall into a state of disrepair, and were told that this was because of now abandoned plans to build a new hospital facility in the Thornhill area as part of the new health centre which the health board decided on more than 10 years ago.

The meeting was organised by Forres Community Council and chaired by Moray Council member for Forres, Irene Ogilvie.

Councillor Ogilvie said afterwards that she would continue to stand by her petition to save the hospital from closure, and encouraged more people to add their names to it. It currently boasts more than 1,000 signatures, and copies are still available to sign in the ‘Gazette’ office on the high street.