| But, as some expressed reservations over escalating costs and the bid to seek a private developer to build new hospital premises, one NHS Tayside board member said they could not afford not to go ahead with the plans.
Liz Forsyth made a passionate plea to forge ahead with the proposals for mental health services at a meeting of NHS Tayside’s finance and resources committee in Kings Cross Hospital, Dundee.
New buildings for psychiatric patients will be provided at Murray Royal Hospital in Perth, Stracathro Hospital, by Brechin, and at Carseview, Dundee, under the proposals.
It was the latest stage in what has become a very protracted planning process around the replacement of out-of-date hospital buildings and investing more in supporting patients in their own local communities.
Managers were looking for extra money to fund the proposals as the estimated costs have been rising over the several years of reviewing and planning altered services.
One of the plans brought before the board was the 18th draft and is expected to change again before final approval is sought. To complicate matters, separate plans for three different services to different groups of psychiatric patients are now being “bundled” together.
In a bid to attract a private developer for the new build elements of the plans, the separate proposals are all now being pushed through the planning process at the same time.
Local health bosses are now preparing outline business cases which will together come before other formal meetings of NHS Tayside before being submitted to the Scottish Executive in April for permission to implement the plans.
Mrs Forsyth, non-executive member of NHS Tayside, who has taken a lead in mental health, said work on the new buildings would not start before 2010 and the world would have changed again by then.
She said that normally when she looked at outline business cases for projects, she asked herself if the health authority could afford to do what was being asked.
“In this case I am saying can we afford not to do this,” said Mrs Forsyth.
She said the world had “changed shape” since the health authority embarked on a review of services for the mentally ill. She said she would always want the health authority to live within its means, but said again, “I think we cannot afford not to do this.”
She believed the plans reflected, and indeed anticipated, modern thinking around healthcare that as much as possible should be delivered as close as possible to a patients own home.
If the plans are fully implemented many more nurses will work in the community and there will be further retraction on the large institution sites with smaller, purpose-built premises replacing the out-of-date hospitals. |
