DEVELOPING COMMUNITY HOSPITALS - A STRATEGY FOR SCOTLAND
The Scottish Executive committed through A Partnership for a Better Scotland, to develop a strategy for sustaining small, rural and community hospitals where they are safe and effective. A review group involving a range of stakeholders was established to take this forward.
The strategy sets out the future role and function of community hospitals, looking at the potential for
Developing community hospitals as part of local extended primary care systems, meeting the vast majority of the needs of the whole local population
Enhancing community hospitals' roles as locally accessible, multi-disciplinary providers of a wide range of planned and unplanned services
Developing community hospitals as local resource centres, providing not only health care, but also social care and other related community activities.
This role would include both planned and unplanned care service and include community hospital provision in urban as well as the more traditional rural settings, with or without in-patient beds.
The strategy asks NHS Boards to develop strategic plans for the development of community hospitals to shift the balance of care into the community and build on the excellent services already being provided. Planned in this way we should expect to see a generation of new and revitalised community hospitals providing excellent patient focused care within a local based setting. The Strategy was launched at Leith Community Treatment Centre on 20 December 2006.