Hospital bed number cut defended

The number of beds is being cut at Borders General Hospital

Health chiefs have defended plans to reduce the number of beds for elderly patients at Borders General Hospital.

NHS Borders recently refurbished a total of four wards in the building near Melrose.

In the process it has been agreed that the total number of beds should be reduced from 120 to 92.

However, a spokesman for the health authority said this would not mean a reduction in the quality of service received by patients.

Ralph Roberts, director of integrated health with NHS Borders, said the proposal for cutting beds had come about during the refurbishment works.

"We put a number of changes in place in terms of the way we managed patients in the hospital while we were doing the refurbishment programme," he said.

Sufficient capacity

Mr Roberts said that when staff had seen the changes they were reluctant to see them reversed.

"They didn't want to go back to the way they were working before," he said.

He added that the changes should still leave sufficient capacity at the hospital.

"Over the summer, although we were working with one ward closed at a time, we still had on average between 30 and 40 beds in the hospital empty at any one time," said Mr Roberts.