The NHS Centre for Integrative Care, formerly the Glasgow Homeopathic Hospital, is an NHS treatment centre specialising in holistic treatments, including the use of

homeopathy Homeopathy or homoeopathy is a pseudoscientific system of alternative medicine. It was conceived in 1796 by the German physician Samuel Hahnemann. Its practitioners, called homeopaths, believe that a substance that causes symptoms of a dis ...

, on the Gartnavel Hospital campus in

Glasgow Glasgow ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated popul ...

. It is managed by NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde.

History

The hospital has its origins in a small facility located at Berkeley Street which was funded by the Houldsworth family and opened as the Houldsworth Homeopathic Dispensary in March 1909. It moved to 5 Lynedoch Crescent in May 1914 and then to a substantial villa in Great Western Road in 1931 before joining the

National Health Service The National Health Service (NHS) is the umbrella term for the publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom (UK). Since 1948, they have been funded out of general taxation. There are three systems which are referred to using the " ...

as the Glasgow Homeopathic Hospital in 1948. It moved to the Gartnavel Hospital campus in 1999 and became the NHS Centre for Integrative Care in 2014.

Proposed closure

There have been prolonged efforts to de-fund homeopathic treatments within the NHS. ,

NHS Lanarkshire NHS Lanarkshire is responsible for the health care of more than 652,000 people living within the subdivisions of Scotland, council areas of North Lanarkshire and South Lanarkshire in Scotland, making it the third largest health board in the countr ...

NHS Highland NHS Highland is one of the fourteen regions of NHS Scotland. Geographically, it is the largest Health Board, covering an area of from Kintyre in the south-west to Caithness in the north-east, serving a population of 320,000 people. In 2016–1 ...

and NHS Lothian had ceased to make referrals to the centre. NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde has proposed that the centre may be reassigned to become a new centre for the treatment of chronic pain. Plans to close the unit were put forward by Greater Glasgow and Clyde Health Board in 2017. , the Centre for Integrative Care was still operating, with an annual budget of £1.7M. NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde continues to mention homeopathic treatments on its website.

References

{{authority control NHS Scotland hospitals Hospitals in Glasgow Homeopathic hospitals in the United Kingdom NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde