MINISTERS should have intervened sooner in the case of the health board that "lost" more than 50 reports into serious incidents, MSPs heard yesterday.
Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie questioned why Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon had only this week ordered a review into the case of NHS Ayrshire and Arran.
The case was described by the Information Commissioner as the worst he had ever encountered, when a report into the case by external consultants had been published three months ago.
John Scott, Conservative MSP for Ayr, asked Alex Salmond for an assurance there would be no repeat of such failures and that "patient safety not be put at further risk by the intransigence and ineptness of Ayrshire and Arran senior managers".
This week's report by information watchdog Kevin Dunion vindicated the long campaign by psychiatric nurse Rab Wilson for the release of reports into serious incidents from which lessons should be drawn.
The board dubbed him "vexatious" and at one point he was suspended for three months on bullying charges which were later dropped.
Mr Wilson, of New Cumnock in Ayrshire, who is also a poet and sits on the Scottish Government's working group on Scots language, said: "It's been a very trying five years."
The board has admitted serious faults in its systems before 2009 but stressed that last November's report by consultants gave their new arrangements a clean bill of health.
Mr Rennie said to Mr Salmond: "Yesterday the Health Secretary instructed an immediate report into the problems in Ayrshire and Arran."
He added, of the consultants' report: "Why has it taken three months since it was published in November for the Health Secretary to act?"
First Minister Alex Salmond replied: "The double action of not just looking at the FoI policy but looking to the heart of what the freedom of information request was about is very important as well; hence asking Health Improvement Scotland to carry out that urgent audit."
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