NHS Lothian is continuing work to improve Adult Mental Health services after accepting a report published by Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) today (Thursday 13 November).
Significant work has been ongoing since March 2025 to meet the considerable increase in demand for beds, which regularly exceeded capacity, and address system pressures.
A detailed improvement plan to address the requirements from the HIS report is also well underway, with many of the actions already complete or in progress.
The HIS inspection took place in June during efforts to meet demand. While it identified many areas of good practice within teams and the care provided, it highlighted more needs to be done.
Jim Crombie, Deputy Chief Executive, NHS Lothian said:
“We take patient safety extremely seriously and took immediate action to address many of the concerns raised in the report.
“A structured plan to reconfigure wards to add extra permanent beds where needed is almost complete. This will end the use of temporary, non-standard areas and the divert suite, which were set up in response to demand.
“Additional leadership oversight and staff training are in place to improve the quality and consistency of ligature inspections, assessments and observations to further reduce the risk of patient self-harm or suicide.
“We have also recently recruited 97 newly qualified nurses, and 30 healthcare support workers. This will allow us to meet increasing service demand and provide more resilience, while significantly reducing the use of bank and agency staff.
“We are committed to providing safe, effective care for patients and ensuring staff are well supported. We are grateful to HIS for their guidance and will continue to work with them and other professional bodies to improve our services.”
Since the initial improvement work began, considerable progress has also been made in reducing delayed discharges. This includes working closely with the health and social care partnerships and other specialist care providers to ensure patients can return to the community with appropriate support.
Improvements are also underway to enhance patient and carer communications, building on the positive work noted in the report of proactively obtaining their feedback. More widely, an ongoing programme of work to transform mental health services to meet the changing needs of mental health care and future proof services also continues.
