End-of-Life Care To Go Private in Glasgow

This article from Kenneth Roy in today's Scottish Review is of utmost importance to the future of end-of-life care in Scotland.

'Early next week - as early as Sunday if the parties are disposed to interrupt their weekend - Europe's largest health board and a private developer will finalise the most controversial land deal in the history of the NHS in Scotland. It will make end-of-life care a business to be conducted for profit - while the hospice which provides the care at present, and has done so with distinction for more than half a century, has its funding for this work withdrawn. After years of delay, the will of Greater Glasgow and Clyde Health Board appears finally to have prevailed. On 31 January, it will only remain to sign the missives.

Yet, even in the final minutes of the 11th hour, serious questions need to be faced about this commercial transaction in the name of the National Health Service...'

IV
The case for ministerial intervention

We have said next to nothing about the hospice itself, which is graded 'excellent' by the Care Commission and raises £30,000 a week – every week – to sustain its admirable work for the terminally ill; we have said nothing about the dilemma it faces in the light of the health board's funding decision and the insulting suggestion that it should become a nursing home, an 'option' which would destroy the unique ethos of the hospice at a stroke. At this stage, we have confined ourselves to questions of governance and accountability.

But there is a larger question still. Why, with scarce resources and the ability to make a rational choice, would any responsible public body commit to such a building project when the service is already being provided to the highest standards of clinical and nursing excellence by a top-rated hospice?

Greater Glasgow and Clyde Health Board has a duty to account satisfactorily for its actions in this matter in the last nine years. It it fails to do so in the very short time left, there is in our view a compelling case for ministerial intervention to halt the land deal pending an inquiry by Audit Scotland.

Please read it yourself. Serious questions do need to be answered and consequently the signing of any missives needs to be delayed. This is a template for the privatisation of the care of our dying. That is not what I want for Scotland. I intend to email Kenneth Roy's article to my MSP and do hope you too will consider bringing it to the attention of your MSP immediately.

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