Joint statement by:
- Martin Dowey, Leader of South Ayrshire Council
- Lesley Bowie, Chair – Ayrshire and Arran NHS Board
- Claire Burden, Chief Executive – NHS Ayrshire & Arran
- Dr Crawford McGuffie, Medical Director and Deputy Chief Executive – NHS Ayrshire & Arran
Following concerns raised through the local media, senior leaders of South Ayrshire Council and NHS Ayrshire & Arran met to discuss the persistent rumours that University Hospital Ayr is being deliberately run down to be closed.
At this meeting the Chair, Chief Executive and Medical Director for NHS Ayrshire & Arran confirmed that, despite some severe workforce pressures, University Hospital Ayr will be a vital component in providing high quality services moving forward.
Recruitment remains a huge challenge within NHS Scotland and we continue to target all opportunities to fill current staff vacancies.
For the avoidance of doubt, University Hospital Ayr is as important to NHS Ayrshire & Arran as any other hospital within Ayrshire. This includes the Emergency Department at Ayr. It is clear that we need both our Emergency Departments and both our acute hospitals at Crosshouse and Ayr.
During the meeting representatives from both organisations confirmed and re-affirmed their shared commitment to work together in their ambitions to develop our local health and care services to meet the changing needs of the population of South Ayrshire.
Dr Crawford McGuffie, Medical Director for NHS Ayrshire & Arran, described how, since the COVID-19 pandemic, demand for health and care services across Ayrshire and Arran has increased. He said: “We have experienced high demand for services across our whole system – in primary care, community and social care services, urgent and emergency care, and acute hospital services.
There was a shared understanding that pressures of the pandemic have also resulted in wide ranging recruitment issues across both organisations. This is a similar picture for the whole of Scotland and for the whole of the UK.
It is clear that in order to meet the increased demand and address those workforce challenges, we need to work together to change the way our health and care system is delivered. Our Caring for Ayrshire programme is how we plan to do this in partnership.
The Caring for Ayrshire vision is that care will be delivered as close to home as possible, with a focus on improving both healthy life expectancy and absolute life expectancy within our communities. There will be an emphasis on preventing illness and maintaining wellbeing while providing high quality hospital care when this is required. This plan will be supported by a network of community services.
We are looking at how and where best to provide services, so our patients can get the right care in the right place at the right time.”
Lesley Bowie, Chair of Ayrshire and Arran Board, explained: “We would like to reassure our citizens, as well as our staff, that we need both University Hospitals Ayr (UHA) and Crosshouse (UHC). We have no plans to downgrade or close University Hospital Ayr. On the contrary, we need to develop the site so we can ensure the sustainability of future services.”
Claire Burden, Chief Executive of NHS Ayrshire & Arran added: “We want to build on the successes of clinical teams and services at our University Hospital Ayr site – for example, our wide ranging outpatient services; a newly extended endoscopy suite; our orthopaedic elective services; and our urology services to name a few. In addition to more than 300 medical and surgical beds that are provided from the University Hospital Ayr site, we need them all.
“As has always been the case, at peak times and if one site is busier than the other, both University Hospitals Ayr and Crosshouse provide cross cover for new emergency admissions. This demonstrates the ongoing need for the capacity that is provided across each of our hospital sites.”
Dr Crawford McGuffie explained more about clinically led reform: “We are currently following a model of clinically led reform, whereby clinical teams plan services that are deliverable, sustainable, safe, high quality, and based on the clear operational understanding of what will best serve our population.
“However, we do recognise the workforce challenges in some areas. In terms of our urgent care services, there are national shortages of experienced middle-grade medical staff who provide urgent care. This includes the specialty of emergency medicine in our Emergency Departments. These very senior decision makers are not available in the numbers that are required, which has resulted in service issues across Scotland.
“In a situation where there are no middle-grade staff available and additional consultant working to cover these shifts is not possible, we may need to make short-term changes to our services. Patient safety will always be our priority. This means that to keep every one of our patients safe, we may direct patients to specific hospital sites if there is a risk to patient safety. This is existing practice and is not the same as making plans to close an Emergency Department.
“While we have to make contingency plans that cover ‘worst case scenarios’ as part of our resilience planning, we would like to reassure our citizens and staff that we have no plans to close the Emergency Department at UHA or reduce the opening hours.”
We appreciate that our staff may have concerns about the current pressures and may have questions about what may or may not happen. We would encourage our staff to discuss any concerns with their team and raise issues with their line manager. We also have robust whistleblowing processes, and so would encourage our staff to contact one of our Speak up advocates.
We would also like to reassure members of the public, patients and staff that we will provide regular updates on developments and initiatives to address some of the current issues we are facing and will listen to any concerns.
Over the coming months, we will provide more information on community and social care services, primary care services, and hospital services as well our plans to address the winter pressures.
We would also like to thank our staff working across the whole system for their help and understanding as we continue to work under extremely difficult circumstances.