NHS Fife bosses and their Scottish Government masters have been warned they must take responsibility for the “bleak” crisis facing acute hospitals in Fife or face the axe amid fears the chaos could deepen this winter.
In a hard-hitting statement, Fife Council leader Alex Rowley, pictured, has called for “greater transparency” around the demand for services and resources available to meet that demand.
He believes the Scottish Government must also be held to account for issuing “dictats” without putting in place enough resources to achieve the targets being set.
Mr Rowley warned the level of pressure on health and social care services must be addressed if Fife is to avoid “an even deeper crisis” in the NHS this winter.
It comes just weeks after Health Improvement Scotland’s inspection report damned care for the elderly at the NHS Fife-run Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy, revealing a raft of issues with dignity and bed capacity.
Mr Rowley told The Courier: “There can be no dispute that our hospital services in Fife have been operating at crisis points over the last number of months with the Victoria Hospital often operating way over the capacity levels, putting major pressure on staff.”
Mr Rowley said: It is perhaps not surprising therefore that the recent inspection report from Healthcare Improvement Scotland for the care for older people in acute hospitals in Fife was so bad.
“Having read the report with utter dismay I have to say I became angry when I then read the press statements being issued by senior management in NHS Fife trying to belittle the seriousness of the shortcomings for care for our elderly in Victoria Hospital.
“It is the people who have presided over the management of our NHS in Fife that need to start to take responsibility and if they are not up to the job, then they should not be there.”
Mr Rowley said the Scottish Government’s “obsession” with targets regardless of quality of care was “not acceptable”.
He added: “We really need to start to hold to account the politicians in Edinburgh who seem to think the role of government is to issue dictats on waiting times and discharge times without taking any responsibility for putting in place the resources to achieve these. The obsession with targets regardless of the quality of care is not acceptable.
“When we took charge of the administration in Fife Council last year I immediately questioned the assumptions that had been made around the closure of 200 beds from hospitals in Fife and 100 beds from care homes.
“It is now clear from a report from the medical director of NHS Fife that we need more beds into the hospitals not less. In Fife Council we have set aside £32 million to purchase care home places.
“But in the last two quarters we have overspent this budget and are currently purchasing 1921 care home beds as compared to the 1884 budgeted for. The government in Edinburgh must realise that community care is not care on the cheap and unless properly resourced it will not happen.
“Our focus on resourcing care packages and care beds to get people out of hospitals also comes at a cost for wider services in the community. There are currently around 800 people in Fife waiting for an assessment or a care package to be put in place and when it comes to preventative work supporting older people to stay active in the community we are doing very little. We are basically operating services that are focused on crisis and that is at the cost of prevention.
“This is a pretty bleak picture and I believe that given where we are at now there is no capacity to meet the demands that will come this winter. The integration of health and social care is built on an assumption that there will be a significant transfer of resources from acute services to community services.
“Given the current issues in our main acute hospital in Fife I would say such a transfer is impossible and we therefore need clarity on how the growing demand on community services is to be resourced.”
At a recent NHS Fife meeting, the chairman of the health authority’s operational divisional committee, Dave Stewart, claimed efforts to meet a Scottish Government A&E waiting time target had increased overcrowding at the Victoria and had simply shifted the problem elsewhere.
Mr Stewart has also warned that the Victoria, where a £170 million new wing was opened last year, may soon have to turn away emergency patients.