Pressure mounts on hospital bed spaces - Sue Webber

They will rightly guess they are for a new access road into the Royal Edinburgh Hospital, but then wonder why they rarely see any vehicles going in or out. It doesn’t take much to work out the junction was built to cope with extra traffic generated by new facilities on the site and avoid congestion at Tipperlinn Road, but what’s happened to the expected services?

It will surprise no-one to learn the plans have been sitting on a shelf for years, seemingly no further forward than when detailed discussions took place in 2017.

Health Board papers from the time show that Phase 2 of the Royal Edinburgh’s redevelopment had an outline business case and an assurance that funding would be supported by the Scottish Government.

It also recognised that the hospital should shift to providing more day facilities like helping people with learning disabilities, but at the same time treat patients needing more constant care in the community. The latter would need more specialised housing, but as that couldn’t happen overnight there were other plans to expand the acute unit by eight beds.

The improvements to care in the community never materialised and the result is ever-mounting pressure on bed spaces. Quite the opposite, and as I discovered two weeks ago, it has reached breaking point.

I learnt that some patients with acute mental health issues were lying on mattresses on the floor because a unit designed for 105 patients was coping with 129. So bad was the situation that the hospital temporarily refused to accept new admissions and some new patients were taken to St John’s in Livingston instead. Plans were even afoot to take people to the Borders General Hospital which has capacity issues of its own.

I tried to raise this at First Minister’s Questions, but I wasn’t selected and now the Royal Edinburgh must carry on and pray demand doesn’t reach the same levels as it did at the start of the month. But demand doesn’t capture the reality of despairing people, those who are suffering extreme breakdowns or psychosis, or who have survived suicide attempts.

Social prescribing like a one-off counselling session, or a walk in the park won’t work; these are people that desperately need professional help and for their families, the trauma must be unbearable even without any uncertainty about their loved-one’s care.

Shockingly, there are currently no low secure mental health facilities in Lothian to protect those in danger of harming themselves or, of course, others. Addressing this as a priority was recognised over a year ago in a report which pointed out the obvious that treating patients outside of Lothian produced worse outcomes for higher costs, yet there was no mention of it in an investment briefing note last week.

Providing proper rehab facilities plus an essential low secure unit will cost between £33 and £61 million, but the cost of doing nothing is still £360,000, which sounds like money down the drain for further deterioration.

No doubt the SNP blame this crisis on Brexit, inflation, or whatever other excuse they can find, but their watch goes back 16 years and it’s about time they accepted responsibility.

Sue Webber is a Scottish Conservative MSP for Lothian