A former NHS director last night backed the SNP's moves to save accident and emergency services.

Dr Christine Rodger, who retired from NHS Lanarkshire in April, said the board's decision to downgrade Monklands A&E in Airdrie needed to be entirely reviewed.

Dr Rodger also suggested the views of some medical staff had not been adequately sought during the health board's consultation about the future of emergency care.

She said: "At the time of the public consultation, and even before that, a lot of clinicians' views were moulded and the decision-making was engineered. As a result a lot of morale was lost and a lot people said it is a fait accompli, we can't touch it'."

Her comments come just days after former Health Minister Andy Kerr said "doctor after doctor" backed plans to centralise A&Es in Lanarkshire and Ayr.

Yesterday, Dr John Browning, who retired as medical director for NHS Lanarkshire in December, added his voice to those warning against keeping all three A&Es in the region. He said: "If the SNP vote to reverse decisions, that could be a major disaster for Lanarkshire." He predicted services would collapse because of staffing problems.

However, Dr Rodger, who was a consultant physician at Monklands before helping the health board meet NHS standards as director of clinical effectiveness, said innovative ways of dealing with staffing issues had not been properly explored. These include having doctors on call for more than one hospital at a time and using telemedicine to obtain expertise on patients' scans.

She also countered the view that heart attack victims will not be endangered by longer journey times because paramedics can give them clot busting drugs. She said: "That has started in ambulances but it is not perfect. Not all ambulance people are comfortable with it."

The degree of ill-health in the communities surrounding Monklands, including cardiac failure, is among her prime concerns.

She said: "A lot of the illness in Lanarkshire is within the Monklands district - heart attacks and strokes and other things that go with a level of deprivation such as accidents and drink."

Dr Browning said if the SNP build on the strategy agreed by NHS Lanarkshire last year this could be positive, but he believed Lanarkshire could not continue to run three emergency units.

"They'll have a situation where one of the services in Lanarkshire fails because of the difficulties recruiting staff," he said. There are not enough seriously ill patients to maintain the skills of intensive care, surgical and medical admissions staff at three sites, he argued. Dr Browning said NHS Lanarkshire already struggled to recruit consultants with surrounding health boards offering higher quality services. He fears a domino crisis where increasing reliance on locum cover affects the accreditation of units to train junior doctors, in turn removing another layer of staff.

On the consultation of staff about the shake-up, he said: "Everyone was given an opportunity to have their voice heard."

The SNP is due to announce their plans for Monklands and Ayr A&E units tomorrow.