Health service goes from bed to worse

OUR article today about an NHS horror story is another eye-opener.

Lucy Mackay, from Kilbirnie, was taken to accident and emergency by ambulance after suffering pain all over her body.

Her ordeal included a near 10-hour wait at A&E and three days in a hospital store room, after which she was discharged without having vital scans carried out.

As Lucy told us: “I would hear them outside the room laughing about what was happening to ‘the girl in the cupboard’.”

NHS staff do a great job but negative feedback from patients is now a reality.

Our health service is in urgent need of reform but nobody seems willing to take responsibility for making radical changes.

It is not just individual patients whose testimony is damaging the reputation of our most valued public service.

Two flagship hospitals at both ends of the M8 – the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow and the new Sick Kids facility in Edinburgh – are in dire straits.

The Sick Kids remains unopened due to ventilation problems and the Queen Elizabeth should never have been opened in the first place.

The Scottish Government’s day job is to ensure that public services get better, not worse, and it is hard to argue that Nicola Sturgeon’s administration should be given a pass mark on the NHS.

Waiting times targets will not be met until 2021 and the performance of some health boards is a scandal.

If the First Minister is mulling over a New Year’s resolution, it should be to fix our ailing health service.