Plans for new health services in Ayrshire have been put on hold in order to retain an accident and emergency unit, BBC Scotland reports.
Last month, Scottish Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon MSP overturned her predecessor's decision to close the units at Ayr Hospital and Monklands in Lanarkshire.
But due to shortfalls of public funds, this means that a new cancer centre based at Ayr is among the proposed services being suspended.
NHS Ayrshire and Arran had also planned community casualty units at Girvan, Cumnock and Irvine.
The decision to keep Ayr and Monklands A&E units open was one of the first announcements made by Ms Sturgeon when she became health secretary.
Gavin Tate, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at Crosshouse Hospital in Kilmarnock, said he was worried that health services in Ayrshire and Arran would suffer.
"The problem will be that the health board may well, if required to maintain two full A&E departments, be unable to fulfil the other extensive plans for the improvement in cancer services, eye services, local community casualty units and other significant developments." said Mr Tate.
While responsibility for Scotland's health service has been devolved to the Scottish Parliament, and the allocation of funds is no longer decided in Whitehall, Westminster MPs for Ayr do still bear responsibility for how much public money is available to the Scottish Executive.
Clearly if planned NHS improvements are having to be abandoned to keep basic A&E services open in Ayr, then local MPs who vote to waste vast sums of public money by gifting it to the audit-failing EU will get the blame for that money not being available to improve local health services instead.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment