Edinburgh’s New Sick Kids Hospital Opening Delayed Yet Again
Miles Briggs MSP for Lothians has said that it is unacceptable that The Royal Hospital for Children and Young People has yet again been delayed, now until Autumn 2018.
The project, which was originally scheduled to open in Winter 2012, has been further delayed to Autumn 2018.
The £150 million facility has experienced delay after delay with no clear reasons given. Campaigners have expressed anger that, during the six years of delay, a similar facility in Glasgow has been completed with funding from The Scottish Government.
Miles Briggs MSP commented : “Families, parents and patients across the Lothians and eastern Scotland will be deeply disappointed and frustrated at this.
“This appears to be yet another delay to the opening of a vital new hospital facility, despite NHS Lothian guaranteeing that it would open this autumn.
“Families deserve answers and clarification from both NHS Lothian and the Scottish Government about the reasons behind this delay and I will again be seeking these on behalf of constituents.
“The SNP government’s handling of this whole project – which it claims is one of its flagship infrastructure investments – has been incredibly poor from the outset, having originally indicated a new hospital could be ready by the end of 2012.
“Since then we have seen delay after delay and this is unacceptable.”
Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.
The facts just don’t stack up for Tory Miles Briggs ramblings.
NHS Scotland is demonstrably the best-performing in the UK and among the best in the World with record funding and record numbers employed compared to recent unionist admininistrations:-
1. Scotland has the best and still improving A&E performance in the World. (Royal College of Emergency Medicine and Holyrood.)
2. Scotland has the most GPs per head of population in the UK and has had so every year since at least 2004. (Nuffield Trust )
3. Scotland’s GPs feel the most-satisfied, the least over-worked and the least-stressed in the UK and perhaps in the World. (Commonwealth Foundation of New York )
4. Scotland’s GPs are significantly more satisfied with the coordination across multiple sites and providers than in England. (Commonwealth Foundation of New York4)
5. 94% of Scottish cancer patients rated care as ‘highly positive’ but only 61% of English cancer patients did so. (Gov.scot and NCPES )
6. Over 100 000 treatment delays caused by junior doctor strikes in England but none in Scotland (BBC )
7. Bed-blocking in Scottish hospitals remains on a downward trend, with 7% fewer delayed discharges than last year. This is in stark comparison to other parts of the UK where the number of people delayed waiting to leave hospital is on the rise. (Herald, Scotsman and Jersey Evening Post! BBC )
8. Scotland spends more per capita on health (Nuffield Trust,
9. Scotland, by contrast [with England], has abolished all vestiges of the ‘internal market’. (The King’s Fund )
10. There is relatively little cross-border flow of patients from Scotland to England. (The King’s Fund )
11. Scotland specifically embraces a philosophy of ‘mutuality’ between the Scottish people and the NHS. Internally it has a highly developed approach to partnership working between the trade unions and management. The partnership’s remit stretches well beyond terms and conditions to broader issues such as quality and the design of services. (The King’s Fund )
12. Scotland has a long and honourable tradition of clinical audit that over the years, both before and after devolution, has helped inform the approach of the other countries. (The King’s Fund )
13. Scotland appears to have made more progress [in developing integrated care], perhaps in part due to its relative organisational stability over the past decade (The King’s Fund )
14. Scotland’s greater and earlier success in getting an electronic and shared summary care record in place, despite England investing vastly greater sums in its National Programme for IT (The King’s Fund )
15. Public satisfaction with the Scottish NHS reaches as high as 74% in Scotland but only as high as 63% in England (King’s Fund)
Comments are closed.