Moray’s major hospital should have greater recognition within the management of NHS Grampian.
That was one of the outcomes from a meeting this week between Moray’s MSP and the new Cabinet Secretary of Health, Shona Robison.
The meeting was called by Richard Lochhead MSP amid concerns that services at Dr Gray’s Hospital did not lose priority as NHS Grampian addressed issues raised by a Healthcare Improvement Scotland report.
Another outcome of the meeting was an assurance that recruitment of key posts at Dr Gray’s would be filled as quickly as possible.
Commenting following the head to head at the Scottish Parliament, Mr Lochhead said: “Dr Gray’s delivers excellent healthcare for 95,000 people in Moray and the wider region, and I want to ensure it has the support it needs to keep doing that.
“My meeting with the Health Secretary and her senior officials was very helpful and I hopefully managed to convey the need for NHS Grampian, with Scottish Government support, to ensure that issues facing Dr Gray’s are prioritised by the new management regime in NHS Grampian.”
“Ms Robison gave me a firm assurance that she would consider many of the issues I raised and to communicate them directly with NHS Grampian’s leadership.
“The Health Secretary shared my hope that the new chief executive of NHS Grampian would visit Dr Gray’s early in the new year, and she told me that she too was hoping to visit Dr Gray’s early in the new year.
“I very much appreciate the hard work of all our NHS staff at Dr Gray’s and I know that my constituents feel the same. The staff often work long hours and show the utmost dedication and professionalism in all they do. I thank them for that and value highly our local health services and appreciate the tough job NHS staff have to do in often difficult circumstances.”
To ensure that Dr Gray’s issues are kept firmly on the agenda, Mr Lochhead will have his constituency office arrange a meeting with staff at the hospital in the coming weeks.