First Minister urged to act over 24/7 emergency care at Dunbar
Caithness health campaigners are demanding urgent intervention by First Minister John Swinney to ensure 24/7 emergency care is available at Thurso’s Dunbar Hospital.
The plea from Caithness Health Action Team (CHAT) comes in the wake of two medical incidents on Skye that highlighted shortcomings in emergency provision for the island’s residents.
In 2018, a review by Dr Sir Lewis Ritchie – following on from a 2015 report – recommended that out-of-hours urgent care access at Portree Community Hospital “should be provided 24/7”.
CHAT says Thurso faces an identical situation. The group has written to Mr Swinney with copies sent to Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes and Scotland’s health secretary Neil Gray.
Ms Forbes has called for an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of a festival-goer in Portree and another life-threatening incident that occurred around the same time while access to Portree Community Hospital was unavailable.
In its letter to Mr Swinney, CHAT says: “We note that the Deputy First Minister is urgently addressing the situation in Portree, seeking rapid implementation of the recommendations made by Sir Lewis Ritchie in his 2015 report, and we would ask that the First Minister, equally urgently, orders an independent external review of out-of-hours emergency care in Caithness, with an interim instruction to NHS Highland to take similar steps here to those recommended for Skye. The situation is, as we say, identical.”
The letter goes on: “Similarly to Portree, [Dunbar] Hospital is not operating as a 24/7 emergency facility and is likewise closed between 5pm and 8am. There is also a stipulation, with regard to access to urgent treatment, which qualifies availability as being ‘when staffing allows’ with ‘appointment only’ access during the day.”
At a meeting in Holyrood earlier this month, at which Ms Forbes was present, CHAT vice-chairman Iain Gregory told MSPs: “Sooner or later, there will be a tragedy. It is not a case of if. It is a case of when.”
While Mr Gregory was referring mainly to maternity provision, he pointed out: “It is abundantly clear that this caveat applies equally to emergency out-of-hours care as well.
“I was accompanied at the meeting by Neil Campbell, a leading campaigner from Skye, and by Dr Gordon Baird, from Galloway, and it would seem, sadly, that our words were prophetic.
“We call upon NHS Highland to act very swiftly to restore 24/7 emergency cover at the Dunbar Hospital, and we hope that the First Minister, Deputy First Minister and health secretary will act rapidly to put things right in both Skye and Caithness.”
CHAT chairman Ron Gunn said: “I fully support any moves that would allow us to have 24/7 emergency care at Dunbar Hospital. Meanwhile, I urge NHS Highland to reinstate full 24/7 cover at the minor injury unit at Dunbar. Pre-Covid, this service saw an average of 3000 patients a year and took the pressure off the A&E department at Caithness General Hospital.”
CHAT secretary Maria Aitken said: “I seriously hope that the Scottish Government will now ensure that our Caithness out-of-hours emergency care is made reliable and safe.
“To read that Dunbar Hospital is closed for emergency care out of hours, when it may be needed most, and ‘appointment only’, subject to staffing, is extremely worrying.
“If someone is in immediate need of emergency care they should be able to access this from a hospital, and there must be procedures to follow in an emergency with sufficient and suitable people deployed to cover both the emergency and also the routine work of the service.”
The letter concludes: “We are sure that the First Minister is seriously and deeply concerned about out-of-hours urgent care access, and that he will not wait for a similar tragedy to happen in Caithness before action is taken, and that steps will be taken to urgently address what is, without doubt, a disaster waiting to happen.”