PSYCHIATRISTS in Scotland's largest health board are routinely sending mentally ill patients to hospitals miles from their local area, sometimes as far away as Inverness, as Glasgow battles an "ongoing bed crisis", it has been claimed.
Dr Daniel Martin, a Glasgow-based psychiatrist and lecturer in psychiatry at Glasgow University, said doctors in the region have been grappling with a shortage of mental health beds for "well over a year".
In a letter to the Herald today, Dr Martin said: "So many psychiatric beds have now been closed and the cuts in social care so great that there has been an ongoing bed crisis in Glasgow for well over a year. Essentially, this means that there have been virtually no reliably available psychiatric beds in Glasgow since mid 2015.
"Patients presenting in very difficult circumstances are routinely admitted outside of Glasgow and at times as far away as Inverness."
Fears for psychiatric services in Glasgow come as the Herald can reveal that the UK's health and safety watchdog is currently investigating the suicide of a mental health inpatient in NHS Lanarkshire. It comes just months after the health board faced criticism from the family of another Lanarkshire patient, Alan Stewart, a paranoid schizophrenic who took his own life in March, hours after being sent home from a community mental health centre.
A spokesman for NHS Lanarkshire confirmed the board was working with the Health and Safety Executive in connection with the latest suicide, but could not provide any other details about the case. He added: “We have taken remedial action which has been commended by the HSE.”
The number of available beds in Scotland for patients with mental health conditions, addictions and learning disabilities fell by 278, to 4,254, between October 2014 and March 2016. The number of inpatients also fell during the same period from 3,909 to 3,633, with an occupancy rate of 85 per cent in March this year - although the rate for Greater Glasgow and Clyde was 96 per cent, the highest in Scotland.
However, Dr Alastair Cook, chair of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Scotland, said he agreed with Dr Martin, adding that the statistics on availability were not borne out by clinicians' frontline experience.
He said: "The evidence tends to tell us that there are beds in the system; our clinical experience, anecdotally from our members, is that it doesn't feel like that."
Psychiatrists have backed the move to reduce inpatient beds in favour of care in the community, but Dr Cook said cuts to support services were exacerbating mental health problems.
He said: "Our sense is that over the last few years, the efficiency savings are coming out of community and mental health services in order to prop up a very stressed acute service. In effect, exactly the opposite of what the [Scottish Government's] 2020 vision and the National Clinical Strategy are trying to do - which is shift the balance from acute to the community."
A spokesman for NHSGGC said the "vast majority" of patients were admitted to their local psychiatric hospital.
He added: "If this is not possible, our bed managers work hard to ensure that the patient is admitted to the nearest hospital within the NHSGGC board area.
"In the uncommon circumstances where we do have to temporarily board a patient with another health board, we work to ensure it is with a board as close to ours as possible. It is the bed manager’s priority to secure a bed for them in one of our wards to facilitate their return soon as possible."
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