South Scotland MSP Colin Smyth has called on members of the Integrated Joint Board (IJB) of Dumfries and Galloway Health and Social Care Partnership to listen to patients and those who deliver services and reject “recommendations” made by officials not to re-open any of the currently closed community hospitals to inpatient services.

Members of the IJB will meet next week to consider the future of Community Hospitals in Moffat, Thornhill, Newton Stewart and Kirkcudbright- which have been closed to inpatients since the pandemic.

Despite support from the public to re-open the hospitals, officials are proposing they should only be used as community hubs.

South Scotland MSP Colin Smyth said: “Those who use and deliver services have made it clear in the consultation that there is a role for our community hospitals in providing inpatient care, so it is deeply disappointing that once again officials in the local NHS are simply ignoring the public. I hope the members of the IJB don’t do the same.

“No one expects us to go back the old cottage hospital model and of course each community hospital should be used as a local health hub.

“It is disgrace that we still force people to travel so far to Dumfries or Stranraer for routine appointments when they should be delivered locally. But Dumfries and Galloway Health and Social care partnership are presiding over a delayed discharge crisis.

“We routinely have more than a hundred people in our acute hospitals every day who shouldn’t be there because of delayed discharge yet the local NHS and council want to reject the option of using our community hospitals, at least in the short term, as step down facilities to provide rehabilitation for people as part of their discharge.

“The community were told these hospitals were being closed on temporary basis to treat covid patients at the start of the pandemic and they would re-open to inpatient services.

“They were never used and now the local NHS are refusing to re-open them. Let us be in no doubt that if the IJB agree not to reopen these four hospitals to inpatients, the next step will be to permanently close Lochmaben, Annan, Langholm and Caste Douglas to inpatient services. Had any those community hospital been shut during covid they would have suffered the same fate and it is only matter of time before they do.

“Few people will be surprised that officials in the health and social care partnership have pushed forward a report and recommendations to deliver what was their preferred option right from the very start. We saw with the failure to re-open the maternity unit in Stranraer that the health and social care partnership decide at the start what the outcome is they want and consultation is just a tick box exercise they ignore. They never had any intention of listening to the public but it’s vital that those who make the final decisions on the board take those views seriously.”