The roll call of shame:

SURGERY – RIP this includes bowel operations, gallbladder surgery, appendectomies, and prostatectomies, acutely ill surgical patients now have to travel to Edinburgh hospitals. Many have suffered long waits either to be transferred or in combined assessment at the Royal where agonising delays on trolleys are common.

TRAUMA ORTHOPEDICS – RIP falling over and breaking your hip is now a disaster for West Lothian residents. The elderly (and sometimes most frail patients) are now transported past St John’s to lie on trolleys at the RIE. It is sometimes days before they get surgery which means that there is scope to raise plenty of money through the Patientline TV and telephone and also through colossal parking charges.

MAJOR INCIDENT STATUS – RIP if there is a serious crash on the M8 or a major incident in West Lothian, patients are no longer taken to St John’s automatically. The local hospital can no longer care for the victims of local disasters because key departments have gone. The ‘local’ trauma centre is at the RIE – 25 miles away from St John’s!

THE MORTUARY – RIP at the end of life there should be dignity. It is a mark of disrespect for the hospital that this too should have been downgraded to a body store and the majority of highly trained staff forcibly redeployed. Moreover, post mortems are no longer done at St John’s. This means that accident victims and sudden deaths have to be transported to the RIE – bodies along the bypass!

PATHOLOGY – RIP yet another department removed by stealth in mid February. One more nail in St John’s coffin. Its removal will make it harder to bring back surgery. Was this done deliberately by Lothian Health?

LOCAL MANAGEMENT – RIP until recently St John’s was a self governing trust under Lothian Health and run separately from the Edinburgh hospitals. Now St John’s has been swallowed up by the ‘Lothian University Hospitals Division'. Management decisions are made in Edinburgh, reflecting the financial needs of city hospitals. For months, the man nominally in charge of St John’s has been seconded to Edinburgh to try to reduce the huge Health Board budget deficit.

SO WHAT NEXT?