“Centralisation
Improves Services? Prove it!” – McNeil’s Challenge to Health Bosses
MSP
for Greenock and Inverclyde, Duncan McNeil, has challenged Health bosses to
prove that centralising health services actually delivers better patient care.
He
says that Argyll and Clyde Health Board must demonstrate that the centralisation
of maternity and paediatrics in October 2003 has improved services in those
areas before it considers the wholesale centralisation put forward in its
under-fire Clinical Strategy.
“Like
the majority in my community, I find it hard to believe that centralisation
improves the quality of health services,” he said today.
“But if we’re wrong and centralisation really does give us better
quality care, it should be easy for the Health Board to prove.
It’s nearly a year since our maternity and paediatric services were
centralised, so let’s see how that’s working.
“Has,
for example, the number of women from Greenock and Inverclyde giving birth to
still-born babies risen or fallen? Has
the number of Inverclyde women giving birth by Caesarean section risen or
fallen? Have waiting times gone up or down? Is the Ambulance Service more or less stretched?
“This
information is vital if we are to properly test the planning assumptions on
which the Clinical Strategy relies. It
must, therefore, be made public.
“And
if, as I suspect, the news is bad, it will blow yet another hole in the string
vest that is the Board’s case for wholesale centralisation of our health
services.”
ENDS
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