PATIENTS LEFT IN THE LURCH
Confusion over care home‘closure’
Terminally ill patients at a Rutherglen care home have been left in limbo after being told the facility is to close.
A section of the town’s residential and nursing care facility on Rodger Drive is facing the axe by NHS bosses.
However, concerned patients and their families haven’t been given a timescale for the closure.
Hospital chiefs say that patients might yet remain at the Limetree House unit, but family members are furious that their sick relatives were informed the unit was being scrapped without anyone present, leaving them distressed and in tears.
When Sharon Easton went to visit her mum Margaret, 78, last week she found her very upset.
Sharon said: “Mum told me a doctor had come from the health board and basically said to them that the NHS would be pulling the funding on Limetree and sending them back to hospital at some point. That is basically telling my mum that they are putting her back into a hospital to die.
“Understandably, this got my mother extremely upset and when I arrived I found that staff members
didn’t know anything about this either. “So now there’s people who don’t know if they are coming or going, and if they’re going to be moved. They haven’t told us anything other than, ‘you’re going and we’ll get back to you.’
“My mum is bed-ridden and only 20 per cent of her heart is working. She needs 24-7 care but at least at Limetree she has her own room and has some comfort.
“Putting her back in a hospital is just going to kill her. She’s still been talking about it and is really upset even days later.”
Limetree House is one of eight units at the care home and offers palliative care for up to 30 patients.
It is still run by the NHS, dating back to a lease agreement signed with NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde in 1990.
The contract requires a five-year termination notice.
The other units at the home, four of which are owned by Advina Health Care, will not be affected.
Sharon hit out at the manner in which her mother, who has been in the home for two years, was told the news.
She said: “I should have been there – the manager of the unit said that usually they would gather the family together, let them know there was going to be some changes and then speak to the patient after that.
“Whoever it was that came in was not a member of staff.
“They should have had a plan in place before they started worrying patients.”
The care home currently costs NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde £882,070 a year.
A meeting in February of the Glasgow City Integration Joint Board Finance and Audit Committee saw several options discussed for the unit, including moving care to a Bupa facility at Darnley Court in Glasgow. However, that plan was then halted as Bupa sold the Darnley Court care home.
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde have apologised over the distress caused to patients.
A spokesman said: “The independent review of NHS Continuing Healthcare, published in 2014, recommended that it be completely revised, as it was no longer fit for purpose and long-term care in a hospital should be the last resort.
“Local authorities and NHS boards have been working together over the last few years to develop services that support this, including intermediate care services, hospital at home and more intensive home care services.
“This means that NHSGGC will be providing new models of care which meet the needs of this group of patients.
“We want to give an assurance that NHS and Social Care staff will work with patients and their families/next of kin over the next few weeks to ensure that each patient’s care needs are fully met. This may see patients remaining within the Rodgerpark facility.
“We would like to apologise for any confusion or distress that has been caused to patients in relation to the communication of this information.”