Following the community and staff scoring event held on 10 March 2020 to evaluate the three potential sites for a new, state-of-the-art University Hospital Monklands, NHS Lanarkshire has identified a number of issues regarding the process.
NHS Lanarkshire set out a robust process for scoring the potential sites in conjunction with independent advisers The Consultation Institute and the Scottish Health Council. However, NHS Lanarkshire and The Consultation Institute have concerns about the scoring event as a result of a significant technical failure in the electronic voting system as well as issues around the level of representative participants.
It had been intended that all participants would place their votes for their preferred site via a hand-held device. The technology system failed on the day therefore a paper-based system was quickly implemented. However, this led to confusion amongst scorers and confusion over the collation of the paper-based results.
In addition, the scoring event set out to achieve a panel of 100 people – 51 members of the community and 49 staff from NHS Lanarkshire and health service partners. Only 87 people attended the event and, from the paper copies, it has not been possible to fully determine the balance between community and staff or the proportion by geographic location.
The Consultation Institute and NHS Lanarkshire are not content with the process of the scoring event.
NHS Lanarkshire has been advised by The Consultation Institute to withdraw the results from the scoring exercise as they are neither robust nor representative.
In order to address this issue, NHS Lanarkshire will now undertake an additional scoring process with the 100 designated participants via a postal submission. This will be wholly managed by The Consultation Institute from the production and issuing of information through to the collection and collation of scores.
NHS Lanarkshire’s Chief Executive, Calum Campbell said: “We are sorry that there were a number of issues that arose with the management of the scoring event and therefore we have taken urgent steps to address this issue.
“It is imperative that the process and the legitimacy of all our data is robust, transparent and truly representative and this is what we will achieve in the additional scoring exercise.
“We thank everyone for attending the scoring event and encourage them to fill out their postal vote.”
The postal vote will be sent to all participants in the near future by The Consultation Institute. The results of the postal returns are expected in April.
The engagement process remains open and feedback or comments can be provided in the following ways:
Emailing – MRP.Team@lanarkshire.scot.nhs.uk
Writing to – FREEPOST RTEJ-HZLK-AETZ, Communications Dept, NHS Lanarkshire, Kirklands, Fallside Road, Bothwell, G71 8BB,
Phoning – 01236 713348.
Full details of the Monklands Replacement Project (MRP) at www.monklands.scot.nhs.uk
