NHS Highland faces renewed questions over closed ward at Migdale Hospital in Bonar Bridge
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NHS Highland is coming under renewed pressure from Sutherland residents over the two-year closure of a ward at Migdale Hospital in Bonar Bridge.
Health chiefs pledged that a programme of community engagement over the future of the small hospital would be held by the end of 2021, but this has yet to happen.
Creich Community Council agreed this week to write to NHS bosses asking them to attend its next meeting and respond to concerns over the unit, which provides geriatric and psycho geriatric care.
And Bonar Bridge resident Michael Baird, who is the Liberal-Democrat candidate for the north, west and central Sutherland ward in the local authority May elections, is raising the issue again with Highlands and Islands MSP Rhoda Grant.
Purpose built and opened just 11 years ago at a cost of £8 million to replace the former Migdale Hospital, the unit has two wards and 22 beds.
The Strathy ward, which caters for older people with mental health problems, has effectively been closed to new admissions since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020, although it also closed in 2019 because of a staffing crisis.
Community councils in the area began raising their concerns over the continuing closure of the ward early last year and in response NHS Highland said it intended to hold a public consultation before the end of the year.
Creich community councillor Norman MacDonald raised the issue again at the group’s virtual meeting on Wednesday evening.
He said: “There has been no update since they (NHS Highland) said they were going to send details of a meeting they were going to have. I think we should be pushing to find out what is happening there.”
Community council chairman Pete Campbell said: “I suggest we should write to them and ask them to come to our next meeting and answer our questions. We should ask somebody who can answer our questions properly and not give us a load of waffle."
Michael Baird, who was at the community council’s meeting, sent a letter on Wednesday to MSP Rhoda Grant with a copy to Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross MP Jamie Stone.
In it he said there was a “continuing secrecy” about Migdale Hospital.
“The promised consultation for the public scheduled for the autumn has never taken place,” he wrote. “Much public money has been spent on the new Migdale Hospital and it is now only being half used.”
NHS Highland has never confirmed the closure of the Strathy Ward but has said that Covid-19 and staffing issues have impacted on its ability to “maintain a certain level of provision” and that the Strathy Ward had been reconfigured due to the pandemic.
The health authority previously told the Northern Times that it was working with an “independent facilitator” to develop a programme of workshops which it hoped would take place by the end of 2021.
