Patients may have to be sent 90 miles to Aberdeen in an emergency if a shake-up of surgery services does not go ahead, an NHS Tayside boss has claimed.
The health board came under fire at a packed-out meeting about the future of Perth Royal Infirmary on Tuesday night.
It was standing room only in Auchterarder Community Church Centre as people from across Perthshire lined up to criticise the decision to transfer all emergency operations from the city hospital to Ninewells in Dundee.
Health board bosses turned out to defend the move, in a U-turn made just 24 hours after chairman John Brown said they would not send anyone to the meeting.
Professor Peter Stonebridge, medical director for the operational unit of NHS Tayside, claimed if investment in the planned surgical trauma unit at Ninewells, which will accommodate emergency operations transferred from PRI, does not go ahead it may lead to the closure of the unit, forcing patients to travel 90 miles from Perth to Aberdeen.
Responding to a question about why investment cannot be made in PRI’s A&E department to keep emergency operations, he said recruitment problems have made the unit unsustainable.
“We need to invest in Tayside to keep a level of service we can afford to provide,” he added.
“If we don’t invest in this trauma centre in Dundee we risk having to go to Aberdeen.
“We may end up having to travel further if we try to save something very local instead of investing in something nearly local.”
The meeting was arranged by Conservative Mid Scotland and Fife MSPs Murdo Fraser and Liz Smith, who launched the Hands Off PRI For Good campaign, in a bid to protect the A&E unit.
Ms Smith said: “There was a fantastic turn out tonight which I’m not surprised at because it is a really serious issue right across Tayside.
“PRI has been performing really well and has been at its busiest in the last short period so the big question around A&E is if it is doing so well why would it be downgraded?
“There have been mixed messages from NHS Tayside and that is not helpful. People want to know that the health service is built on trust and facts.
“We have reassurance that the A&E won’t close but if we downgrade the surgical services just how sustainable is the A&E?”
No exact timescales were given for the changes, but it is expected to take between six and nine months to implement.
Malcolm Wright, interim chief executive of NHS Tayside, pledged that the future of PRI is not at risk and pointed out that the shake-up will see more non-emergency surgeries take place in Perth.
“It absolutely, unequivocally does have a future,” he said.
“We need to look at how we can get a group of sustainable facilities in PRI and in Ninewells.”
