NHS will get ‘much worse’ over winter, ministers warned as major reform urged

Scotland’s NHS will become “much worse” over the winter, the head of the doctors’ union has warned after a report said fundamental reform in the health service is needed.

The Audit Scotland report said some services may need to be withdrawn in order to free up resources to meet growing demand for healthcare.

It said the Scottish Government has no clear plan for how to bring about change in the NHS.

However Health Secretary Neil Gray has insisted the Government has a plan to shift care away from under-pressure hospitals and into the community.

Dr Iain Kennedy, chairman of the BMA’s Scotland Council, said there is a need for “radical reform” in the NHS.

He told BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland programme: “We have heard these warnings before – another seriously worrying report from Audit Scotland that confirms the NHS in Scotland is in crisis with worsening performance.

“It’s clear that urgent action is now required.”

A new operational plan for the NHS is needed, he said, with the current one dating back to 2020.

Dr Kennedy was asked about the recent critical incident declared at NHS Grampian, which saw patients being diverted away from over-capacity hospitals, and if the situation will get more difficult over the winter.

He said: “I’m expecting things to get much worse, but it’s all predictable, this was always coming.

“We haven’t acted as a country to put the resources in the right place over all these years.”

Mr Gray said he understands the case for reform, arguing the Government is trying to take a more preventative approach to healthcare.

He told Good Morning Scotland: “We do have a clear plan, and the plan is to shift the balance of care from the secondary services that we’re currently seeing extremely high demand towards more preventative primary care.

“Investing in our GP surgeries, in our pharmacists and our optometrists to ensure that people are treated earlier, so that their symptoms do not deteriorate, either on their mental or their physical health, and that we see people arriving at hospital.”

He said one issue is that GP consultations are taking longer due to people arriving with more complex conditions.

The Government has invested more than £1 billion in social care provision to help clear the backlog in the NHS, he said.

The Audit Scotland report made clear that without change, “the NHS is unlikely to be able to meet growing demand”.

It added: “Scotland’s NHS is still struggling to deliver care in a timely way, most waiting times standards are not being met.”

Auditors found: “Despite increasing funding and staffing, the NHS in Scotland is still seeing fewer patients than before the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Progress to reduce the backlog of care has been slower than anticipated.”

Scottish Conservative health spokesman Dr Sandesh Gulhane said the report is a “damning indictment of the SNP’s appalling mismanagement of Scotland’s NHS”.

He added: “Successive SNP health secretaries have been asleep at the wheel as the health service has ended up in permanent crisis on their watch.

“Their dire workforce planning and complete lack of vision means that delayed discharge has reached record levels, hundreds of thousands of Scots are on NHS waiting lists, and cancer waiting times have not been met for over a decade.

“In the week of the Budget, this report should be an urgent wake-up call for the SNP to ensure that money is invested in the right areas of our NHS, to ease the burden on patients and staff suffering due to their incompetence.”

Labour health spokeswoman Dame Jackie Baillie said: “(First Minister) John Swinney likes to talk up his NHS record but this damning report shows the scale of SNP incompetence on his watch.

“Spending on agency staff is up 45% on five years ago, yet delayed discharge is at a record high and the NHS is missing three-quarters of waiting list targets.

“After 17 years of the SNP, our health service is broken. The report shows clearly the price hard-working NHS staff and patients are paying for the lack of leadership from the SNP.”

  Published: 03/12/2024 by Radio NewsHub