What should we do with our cottage hospitals?

A three-month public consultation has opened looking at the future of four cottage hospitals in Dumfries and Galloway.

The sites at Kirkcudbright, Moffat, Newton Stewart and Thornhill have not accepted any in-patients since the Covid pandemic, with only vaccination and some outpatient clinics maintained.

The consultation contains six different options for the hospitals ranging from re-establishing in-patient services to complete closure.

An options appraisal exercise by the region's health board has seen the creation of community health hubs emerge as the preferred option.

The consultation runs until 18 August, with its findings being studied before a final decision is taken on their fate in September.

The review comes against a backdrop of significant financial pressures facing the NHS in the region and across the country.

Campaigners have argued that reopening hospital beds in community hospitals could ease the pressure on services and deliver a better rural care model.

Dr Angela Armstrong, a retired Wigtownshire GP, said: "It allows the patients to be looked after in their own community, people can go and visit them easily and their own GP can take care of them.

"That is not meaning that you go and have a major operation - they don't do things like that in cottage hospitals.

"They look after people who aren't yet or are never going to be able to be looked after at home."

She said it could be important in the care of patients to keep them closer to their own community.

"If they are away from home then their recovery is less likely, they feel anxious, don't see people they know and it can be scary," she said.

"Often with cottage hospitals it is older people who aren't well for various reasons and also terminally ill patients who would be looked after near their homes so that people can visit them easily."

The full consultation on the issue is available online.

The health board's director of strategic planning and transformation David Rowland said: "Ensuring that we have a well-planned, effective and sustainable model for delivering community-based health and social care in Dumfries and Galloway is crucial.

"I would urge everyone to get involved and fully consider the options which have been developed."

He said it was "very important" that the health board was "fully informed by the perspectives and experiences of people who live in these communities and who work within health and social care" before making a final decision.

One of the six options would be to resume in-patient services at the hospitals but with reduced bed numbers.

It comes with a warning that it would not be achievable within current budgets.

Instead, the preferred option would be to develop the sites as community health and social care hubs.

As well as providing local access to health services it would also provide the opportunity for income generation from third-party users of the buildings.

No decision on the way forward will be made, however, until after the consultation closes later this summer.