Raigmore Hospital vascular surgery patient ‘left in limbo’ for 2 months waiting for urgent life-and-death operation
‘Shambolic’ staffing shortages at Raigmore Hospital left a Highland man traumatised after waiting two months for urgent surgery to tackle a life-and-death medical condition.
Daniel Rennie, a dialysis patient who lives in Dalneigh in Inverness, said he was left in limbo after nowhere could be found to carry out the vital vascular surgery he needed to tackle potentially life-threatening narrowing of his veins when his health deteriorated.
Certain vascular surgeries have taken place outside the NHS Highland health board in recent years - often in Aberdeen - after several staff within the Raigmore vascular department retired and were not replaced.
Mr Rennie, who has been on dialysis “on and off” for 20 years and has had two kidney transplants during that time, said the service at Raigmore had been fine for much of that time, but that this began to change around three years ago when some senior staff retired.
And he says things really came to a head in the past year, when his health deteriorated.
The situation became so serious that, when CT scan results came back at the end of December and revealed he needed “urgent” surgery, he was left in a healthcare no-man’s land - with NHS Highland unable to carry out the procedure and other health boards initially refusing to take him on as he wasn’t their patient and they had pressures of their own.
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After he and his doctors were left “tearing their hair out” trying to get someone to take his procedure on, a place was finally found for him in Glasgow - but with a wait of more than two months from the point he was told the need for the surgery was “urgent”.
That procedure was finally slated to take place later this week.
But Mr Rennie has slammed the no-man’s land he feels that he, his family, and his doctors were left in for several very stressful weeks at the start of 2025 as they initially struggled in vain to get him the surgery that could literally save his life.
And he has gone public in the hope that no-one else will have to face the same traumatic situation he has had to.
“[The weeks trying to get a surgery booked] have been super distressing and stressful for me, and my family,, my loved ones,” said Mr Rennie. “As for my doctors, my doctors had absolutely no pathway to get me the support that they needed, and they have been just as frustrated as me because nobody was answering their call and giving them the answers that they needed to give to me.
“It's been an all-round sh**show, forgive my French but that's what its been - a total shambles.”
He added that the difficulty sourcing the necessary surgery became so acute that his doctors were having to go to bosses at the very top of the NHS Highland health board to try to get their help to break the deadlock.
“My doctors, my renal doctors who are not vascular specialists, went to the head of NHS Highland, the chief executive, the head of surgery, the head of medical services, and said 'look I have a patient here with absolutely no pathway to get him the support and care that he needs, what the heck do we do?'“ continued Mr Rennie.
“And for two-and-a-half weeks [in January] all that kept happening was every one of us were getting fobbed off [by other boards] and we were being told 'not my problem, not my problem, not my patient'. And for that two-and-a-half weeks I was told I had something very significantly wrong with me that needed immediate attention and for the two-and-a-half weeks I did not know what was wrong with me, I didn't know what the treatment was.
“I was finally, thank the lord God almighty, taken on by a surgeon in Glasgow. But only very reluctantly because of the amount of pushing my renal doctors have had to do, speaking to people way above them at the very top of NHS Highland to get somebody to take on my case.”
Mr Rennie, who works as a Disability Benefits Policy Officer for the Scottish Government, also believes that the wider situation within vascular care at NHS Highland is also not good enough. He says that vulnerable people are being sent on long journeys well outside the local area - even for what should be relatively simple treatments. In other situations, he says specialists are having to travel up from Dundee to carry out tests in Inverness because there is no-one available locally to do them.
“Vascular services are non-existent [at Raigmore], we're literally talking about life and death care. I am a dialysis patient at it is - I require my vascular system to remain alive. I literally need needles put in special veins and arteries and lines put in my neck to stay alive. If something goes wrong with my fistula or something goes wrong with either of my accesses, the nearest available centre is now Aberdeen.”
And he believes this staffing crisis also led to delays in the eventual diagnosis that he required urgent surgery.
“[For a year] I was having falls, I was in and out of hospital, I was getting dizzy, and for the life of them they couldn't discover what was wrong with me,” he said. “I was given every test, and then eventually at about March/April time of last year they discovered that I had a blood clot in my neck. That went on for right up until Christmas of just passed.
“And between August and November of last year I was starting to get very frustrated and upset with my doctors because I was like, 'guys this is not just a blood clot, there is something more sinister going on here. Please listen to me. Do something more about it.'“
Later in the year, new scans found an additional complication.
“In August they discovered that there was some narrowing of my veins in and around my heart,” he continued. “When they saw that scan they decided not to do anything with it, for two reasons. One, they didn't have the vascular specialists to make the right decision. And secondly, they just continued to think 'right, if we clear up the clot, then the narrowing of the veins will get better,' That was fine.”
He says they persisted with the blood thinning medication despite Mr Rennie’s belief things were worse than realised. This he says turned out to be the case, with another full-body CT scan in the autumn revealing that his thinning veins were much more widespread than initially thought.
“By the time we got to November my health had deteriorated significantly - I got sent for another CT scan and this time it was an all-body scan. And they discovered that I have some very life threatening narrowings in and around my heart, my chest, my lungs. It's all over basically the top of my chest, which is very severely bruised.
“So when they got the report back [on December 27]… they finally realised 'well, there's something quite serious here, we need to get Daniel treated. This needs immediate treatment'.”
And this was when the weeks of uncertainty and difficulty securing a surgery slot reared their head.
Mr Rennie is determined to highlight the problems in the hopes of sparking urgent action by the NHS and Scottish Government to ensure others are spared the same deeply worrying waits he did.
A spokesperson for NHS Highland said: “We are very sorry that Mr Rennie has not had the care and treatment he would expect from us. We would encourage him to get in touch with us through our Feedback Team so we can discuss his concerns with him directly.
“Vascular pathways particularly for access to arterial operating in NHS Highland are being reshaped. There are recommendations from the Vascular Society regarding how vascular services should be delivered and we are engaging with Scottish Government in terms of moving towards meeting national recommendations.
“In the interim we have had a number of consultant colleagues relocate from NHS Highland and due to the national shortage of specialist colleagues and best practice recommendations for patients to attend dedicated, expert centres for some treatments, we are currently delivering access to services in collaboration with a number of health boards across Scotland. Whilst we embed and work with these interim solutions which are focussed on delivering services as close to home as possible and only relocating for the most specialist intervention, we are grateful to other boards for their support.
“Referrals to Raigmore Hospital in Inverness will continue and patients will be assessed and have some investigations locally. Many patients require assessment, investigation and non-surgical measures such as blood pressure and cholesterol control, smoking cessation, graduated exercise, and better diabetic control. These can be provided locally.”
A Scottish Government spokesperson added; “We are sorry Mr Rennie has not had the care and treatment he would expect.
“We have been working with all boards, including NHS Highland, to develop a sustainable model for vascular care to ensure equity of access and outcomes with a focus on quality and safety.
“We want to ensure patients are treated as close to home as possible, however, there may be instances where patients have to travel to receive the high quality and safe care they need in another health board.”
