Current Petitions

I appreciate your allowing me to comment on the petition, convener.If members have read Greater Glasgow NHS Board's reply, they will know that there is a great deal of satisfaction that the campaign to save the hospital has been successful. However, the matter still raises the general policy issue of the criteria for designation as a national specialist service.In his letter, Mr Divers makes the point that 85 per cent of the patients who use the homoeopathic hospital in Glasgow are from west-central Scotland. However, we do not know whether that is because only people from west-central Scotland have access to the hospital and the rest of the population does not, or because such services are also available elsewhere in Scotland. My information is that such services are not available elsewhere in Scotland. The fact that 85 per cent of patients are from west-central Scotland does not justify the existing criteria. The criteria for designating national specialist services units need to be reviewed to see whether they are appropriate.Mr Divers does not mention the fairly significant capping of funding for the hospital that has taken place since May. It is fine to say that we will keep the hospital open, but if it is not to be properly funded, the situation will become difficult and potentially unsustainable in the long term.A number of issues remain to be resolved. The main one is the policy issue of what the criteria should be. There is a need to review the criteria to see whether they meet the needs of a modern health service in Scotland.

I congratulate Brian McAlorum and his group, who have managed to save the 15-bed homoeopathic hospital at Gartnavel. I also welcome Andy Kerr's statement when he visited the facility; he said that he wanted similar care to be available elsewhere—that backs up what Alex Neil was saying. Andy Kerr also said that a holistic approach helps people to care for themselves and went on to praise the homoeopathic hospital at Gartnavel. It has been a victory for the Public Petitions Committee that we have managed to save the 15 in-patient beds.However, the petition asks for a review of the criteria; it is a big problem that we have not had such a review. It has been said that 85 per cent of the patients come from the west of Scotland, but I have been at various public meetings to save the homoeopathic hospital and, although some would say that Rothesay was in the west of Scotland, others in Glasgow and parts of the west would say that Rothesay was slightly further out. There are patients who come from outwith what I would call the west of Scotland region. I am not entirely convinced that only 15 per cent of the hospital's patients come from outwith that region. Alex Neil says that the services may not be known about elsewhere, but a woman from Newcastle who came to one of the public meetings had gained access to the facilities.I have written to the Greater Glasgow NHS Board about funding and how much money the board received from other health boards to fund the homoeopathic hospital. However, I have been unable to get an answer to that question. The information I am looking at says that we have not had a response from the chief medical officer, so we will have to look into why that is the case—unless I am looking at the wrong piece of paper. The minister has said in black and white that he wants similar care to be available elsewhere, so we should ask him what is meant by funding for a national service as opposed to funding for a local service.

There are two separate issues. One is the designation of the homoeopathic hospital under the current criteria. It is quite clear, under the current criteria, that the minister is strongly of the view—as is the health board—that the service cannot be designated as a national service. However, the petition calls for something much wider—a review of the criteria. It may be that, if the criteria were modernised and made more appropriate, the homoeopathic hospital would indeed qualify.