There is currently no specialist NHS facility for the treatment of eating disorders in Scotland and those needing specialist care are sent to private hospitals.

Tayside’s bill from those hospitals caring for a handful of local patients is already nearing £1 million this year.

Members of NHS Tayside’s strategic policy and resources committee, meeting in King’s Cross Hospital, Dundee, today, heard that investment in a local team to deliver better care in the community would fill a current gap and help reduce the length of stay in hospital, with more back-up when patients are discharged. There was also a recognition that a wider patient population, whose condition is not so severe as to prompt hospital admission, will benefit from a specialist community based team.

But for the most gravely ill patients, with very low body weight and serious medical consequences of starvation, Tayside has joined together with other health boards in the North of Scotland to provide a highly specialist facility.

Members agreed to share the costs of creating and running a unit in a disused ward at Cornhill Hospital, Aberdeen. Tayside’s share of the estimated annual running costs is £430,000.

A report before the committee stated that Tayside had spent an average £800,000 during each of the last three years on private sector placements.

The current financial year expenditure was expected to be in excess of £1 million.

Medical staff and patients’ families from across Scotland have lobbied the Government for better services for those coping with eating disorders.

Addressing concerns over the size of the unit, NHS Tayside’s strategy and performance manager Neil Fraser said there would remain the option of sending some patients to private hospitals if the NHS facility was full.