A petition calling for the reinstatement of accident and emergency services in Dunfermline is to be formally considered by NHS Fife.
More than 27,500 people have demanded A&E be brought back to Queen Margaret Hospital, two years after the service was transferred to Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy.
The hospital was left with a minor injuries unit which it is claimed is under-utilised as people bypass it to access the busy A&E department 15 miles away.
Jim Philp created a petition urging the health board to reconsider the Dunfermline unit’s closure, claiming the people of west Fife were being discriminated against.
He said patients were forced to pay extra and travel further to access treatment when they could more easily get to a hospital on their doorstep.
A Facebook page set up by Mr Philp entitled Bring Back Our A&E has attracted 1,655 likes. More than 1,300 petitions were signed with a total of 27,558 signatures.
Despite initially saying it made more sense to consolidate two units into one as treatment and outcomes were better, NHS Fife medical director Dr Brian Montgomery said he was prepared to look at the petition.
At a board meeting in Glenrothes, he said: “This was subject to a bit of a discussion in the public session at the annual review in August. It would be a good idea to formally consider it with some input from clinical experts in the background.
“It would be appropriate to remit it to the clinical governance committee, which will do a report to come back to us at the next meeting of the board in February.”
Some board members expressed disquiet at the move, however, claiming reopening the department was a non-starter.
Andrew Rodger said: “We really need to make it clear to the public what has been suggested and also make clear the number of consultants we’re short of in Fife.
“I think we need the right care at the right time in the Victoria Hospital.”
He added: “That hospital needs to up its game. We need to man it properly and have the right amount of beds and resources.
“At the end of the day, people will travel quite a distance to get the right care.”
NHS Fife’s Right For Fife process 12 years ago decided the Victoria should be Fife’s main acute, in-patient hospital with surgery and accident and emergency provision. Queen Margaret was retained for out-patient clinics, day surgery and a minor injury unit.
Mr Rodger said: “Right For Fife was about making sure we had specialists in one hospital so if someone went into hospital they were seen there and then.”
Dr Montgomery said previously that many people from Dunfermline travelling to A&E in Kirkcaldy would have been more appropriately and easily dealt with at the minor injury unit.
“If you’ve got an A&E department you also need all the appropriate specialities standing behind that,” she said.
“You need medical experts, you need surgical experts, you need an intensive care unit, you need imaging like CAT scanning and MRI scanning.
“Without those you don’t have an accident and emergency department so one of the things we have seen, not just locally but nationally, is the number of full-scale accident and emergency departments has reduced in recent years so that the expertise can be concentrated.”