"A new hospital is a chance to design our Highland health services differently" says Edward Mountain MSP

**This article was originally published in Caithness Courier, 22 March 2023

In the last few weeks, I have launched a new campaign to replace Raigmore with a brand new acute general hospital for the Highlands.

For anyone who has visited it recently, Raigmore is beginning to show its age. The last significant building upgrades at the site, including the Raigmore Tower, were built back in the 1980s. 

Forty years on and Raigmore is beginning to feel like an outdated hospital with services shoehorned into a limited site and limited buildings.

We know that even just now wards are often full, thus preventing operations taking place. We also have a situation where patients and staff can't even find spaces to park at the hospital.

While I have welcomed the upgrades and renovations to Raigmore in recent years, these are short-term fixes. For far too long the Highlands has had to make do with piecemeal investment in main theatres, maternity services and orthopaedics, to name just a few.

I also campaigned for and welcomed the construction of the National Treatment Centre – Highland. However, it is indeed what it says, a 'National' Treatment Centre and will not go far in resolving all of our acute care needs.

Therefore, as demand for hospital care increases and medicine advances, we need a new Highland hospital that is fit for the twenty-first century. 

Large-scale projects like this require years of consultation, planning and development. That’s why it is vital we begin the conversations now to get the ball rolling.

It is essential that all rural communities across the Highlands are listened to – and really listened to – when it comes to the designing of a new hospital.

Lessons must be learnt about how the current health care model isn’t working, especially for communities in Caithness.

What rural communities in the Far North will not accept is a new acute general hospital which becomes a giant and sucks resources away from our local hospitals.

We have already seen the dire consequences of that when it comes to maternity provision. We cannot have more of the same.

A new hospital is an opportunity to design our Highland health services differently. I believe that the new hospital should bring with it a new policy. A policy that works on a hub and spoke principle, so that we use our local hospitals.

This approach would mean our local hospitals are revitalised by working in closer partnership with the new hospital.

Another key benefit is that if we face another pandemic similar or worse to Covid-19, then our health service would have a greater capacity to both treat patients with infectious diseases and also limit disruption to routine operations. 

At the end of this month we will learn who the next First Minister of Scotland will be, and I have already written to each of the three candidates to support my campaign.

While all three candidates have acknowledged my correspondence, I have yet to receive a definitive answer at the time of writing this article.

Whoever emerges as the next First Minister, I will be campaigning relentlessly across the region and in Holyrood until a brand-new hospital for the Highlands is delivered.