NHS Highlands’ decision to cancel a Fort William pensioner’s hip operation at Raigmore Hospital on Monday morning due to a flooded basement understandably left the gentleman angry and frustrated.
The forecast was for stormy conditions on Sunday, including heavy rain, so you would think that with the basement area of the hospital having a flat roof and the vital servers being housed there, someone would have kept an eye on things and been alerted to the problem before it became such an issue. How did it get to the point where the room had so much water in it that it was an electrical risk and other systems also became affected? That was bad enough but, having had to wait over a year for an appointment in the first place, it beggars belief that not only was there not a bed prepared for Mr Cromar when he arrived on the Sunday evening ahead of his scheduled operation but that when he was told about the cancellation staff were unable to say when the operation would be rescheduled.
Hip-replacement patients tend to be in a lot of pain by the time their operation comes round, so to be sent home with no new date will have been extremely distressing.