Funding Deal Saves Clydebank Hospice For Three Years

SCOTLAND’S oldest hospice has been given a stay of execution after health officials agreed not to cut its funding for the next three years.

Supporters of St Margaret’s Hospice in Clydebank feared it would have to close after NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde outlined plans to close 30 “continuing care” beds, for frail elderly patients, which attract £1.2million of funding a year.

At a meeting yesterday, health board members rubber-stamped the decision to shut the unit – but threw the hospice a lifeline by delaying the action until 2012.

The health board wants to move the beds to the privately-built Blawarthill Hospital in Yoker as part of a review of services for the elderly, and replace them with council-funded care home places or psychiatric beds at St Margaret’s.

Staff at the hospice argued their core ethos was based on caring for palliative patients and insisted they would resist moves that amounted to St Margaret’s being “downgraded to a nursing home”.

Following the meeting, hospice chairman Professor Leo Martin criticised the board for ratifying the closure of the elderly beds.

But he admitted the three-year funding deal represented a genuine reprieve for the hospice. Previously, it was funded month-by-month.

“We welcome the fact that the board recognises the work we do as a hospice,” said Professor Martin.

“We have consistently maintained that St Margaret’s is all about looking after people who are dying, and these 30 continuing care beds are, in effect, palliative care beds too.

“We have never had three full years of funding before, so ironically we are safer this week than last week..”

Clydebank MSP Des McNulty said: “The fact the hospice now has three years grace is the most positive outcome of the meeting.

“But the uncertainty for the hospice continues. It makes no sense to withdraw funding from the hospice for longer term care of frail and elderly patients and build a new unit at Blawarthill which duplicates the very modern facilities at St Margaret’s.”

A spokeswoman for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said: “During this three-year period the board has given an absolute assurance the door will be left open for St Margaret’s to consider our alternative proposals for the change of use of these beds.”