Stracathro Hospital Closure
(Article published in the Dundee Courier on Thursday 12 February 1998)
A TOP Tayside doctor said last night Stracathro Hospital, by Brechin, would close, but closure could not happen until there was agreement about how its services would be replaced.
Dr Derek Maclean, medical director of Dundee Teaching Hospitals, was speaking after a decision by two senior doctors to resign from their posts at the hospital, which they believe has no future.
Dr Maclean admitted that the resignations could "accelerate" the closure, making it difficult to attract replacement doctors who may view the hospital as a sinking ship.
Dr Maclean said that as soon as he became aware of the two doctors' decision to resign, he began drawing up contingency plans to try to attract replacement doctors.
"We would see a role for Dundee Teaching Hospitals in making sure services in Angus do not collapse," he said.
Dr Maclean will chair a meeting of the heads of all four health trusts in Tayside, to be held in Dundee this evening. They will discuss how they can work together to find "a fair way forward" for health services locally in the run-up to a major reorganisation of the health service nationally.
He said there was "a lot of debate ahead" about what would happen to acute services in Angus after Stracathro came to the end "of its natural term".
Whether services were provided in Dundee or "somewhere in Angus" would be related to "affordability".
"I think Stracathro will close in the course of time, but when remains to be seen because I don't think you can allow that to happen until you have agreed how you are going to replace these services," said Dr Maclean.
Asked if he agreed services had been allowed to run down at Stracathro, Dr Maclean said, "They are certainly changing. That is agreed."
He believes one of the ways around the problem of recruiting replacements for the doctors who had resigned would be to advertise joint appointments, with doctors working between Ninewells Hospital and Angus until such time as the future of acute services in Angus had been decided.
"If we cannot attract new consultants to Stracathro, maybe we could attract them to a joint post," said Dr Maclean.
"One of the things the reorganisation of the trusts needs to achieve is an equity of service. Patient problems in Angus will not go away."
Pressed to predict the lifespan of Stracathro Hospital, Dr Maclean said, "I think it will go for five or six years. Beyond that I don't know."
Other senior doctors in Dundee said it made "medical sense" to close Stracathro, claiming it would have closed a few years ago if it had not been "politically embarrassing"' for the then local MP, Peter Fraser, who intervened to halt the planned closure.
Senior doctors said there would be a "public outcry" if Stracathro closed but people would have to understand that they could no longer expect high quality medical care "around every corner".
"Medicine is becoming increasingly highly technical and the equipment you need to do it is increasingly expensive," said one doctor. "If you want modern medicine you cannot always have it just down the road."
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