HEALTH board chiefs have taken the unusual step of publicly ruling out the closure of Inverclyde Royal Hospital amid mounting concerns about a staffing crisis and budget black-holes in the NHS.

Yet no such assurances were given about vital local services on which many local patients who use the hospital depend.

As reported in the Tele, plans to close the Birthing Unit have been put on pause. There will be no move to a formal public consultation on the closure of the unit, for the time being at least.

A welcome, if temporary, reprieve for a closure-threatened service. Recognition that the health board’s cost-driven case for taking the service away from Inverclyde has failed to persuade those in the community who are making clinical arguments for keeping it open.

Now I want the bosses at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and the SNP government in Edinburgh to go further and lift the threat of closure entirely.

The uncertainty has to end. If plans are on hold then plans have not been dropped. The future of the unit has already been kicked into the long grass for too long. It’s time for decisive action. Tear up the plans to downgrade local maternity services and start again.

It’s not just the birthing unit facing an uncertain future.

Officials have considered a paper on the Out-of-Hours GPs Service across Greater Glasgow and Clyde, which could lead to another round of centralisation away from Greenock and Inverclyde, despite the needs of the local population.

There is anxiety about the future of the ITU. Removing that unit from Inverclyde would mean removing the most complex surgery from the IRH.

It would amount to a serious downgrading of the hospital and it would no doubt have implications for staffing and, potentially, a knock-on effect on other services.

All this at a time when the hospital building itself badly needs investment.

One of my colleagues in the Scottish Parliament warned that if there is not a serious and fundamental rethink then the IRH faces death by a thousand cuts. It’s true, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

If health bosses are really committed to the IRH then they will guarantee the future of the birthing unit, the out-of-hours service and the ITU and, instead of cuts, they will invest in the hospital.