- Former opponents come together around health care reforms
- Alex Neil and Dr Richard Simpson, along with Dr Alastair Noble identify immediate practical steps
- They call for immediate adoption of the NHS England app
Enlighten today releases an action paper written by former SNP Health Secretary Alex Neil, former Labour shadow Public Health Minister Dr Richard Simpson, and former Nairn GP Dr Alastair Noble, who was awarded an MBE for his work in integrating health and social care.
The trio have written individual papers for Enlighten, but have now come together to highlight some immediate, practical actions which the Scottish Government could take in order to improve outcomes.
The recommendations include:
- The convening of a cross party commission to develop a comprehensive, long-term business plan for health and social care
- Licensing the NHS England app now instead of trying to reinvent the wheel
- Identifying someone from a business background to review the use of medicines to identify areas of waste
- Scrapping the recently announced GP walk-in centres and reinvesting the money in existing GP practices
The full paper, ‘Looking Beyond Party Politics: What Should Health & Care Look Like in Scotland in 2035’ can be read here .
Commenting on behalf of the group, Alex Neil said:
“Governance, prevention and people have to be at the heart of the urgent reform that is required. Scotland is not short of good ideas, but implementation has long been where we fall down. That needs to change.
“We are well past the point where we can afford for this to be a party political issue. There are some immediate actions which transcend ideology and transcend politics, and it is those actions we must now take.
“One of the clearest, immediate actions would be to license the English NHS app. We need to stop trying to re-invent the wheel. Not everything needs a Saltire added to it.”
ENDS
NOTES TO EDITORS
- ‘Looking Beyond Party Politics: What Should Health & Care Look Like in Scotland in 2035’ can be read here.
- Enlighten is a public policy institute which works to promote increased economic prosperity, opportunity for all, and more effective public services. Enlighten is independent of political parties and any other organisations. It is funded by donations from private individuals, charitable trusts and corporate organisations. Its Director is Chris Deerin and Alison Payne is the Research Director. Both work closely with the Trustee Board, chaired by Lord McConnell, which meets regularly to review the research and policy programme.
- For media contact Andy Maciver, [email protected], 07855 261 244
3 comments
David Belfall
The rhetoric in this wish list paper is fine but it says nothing about resources – and there is only a marginal reference to the importance of the patient perspective.
Reducing the number of health boards will not deliver the very substantial resources needed to implement the proposals in the paper (or indeed in Programme for Government), especially if there are no job losses – a subject which no politician is willing to discuss.
Both the paper and Programme for Government say nothing about the 31 Integrated Joint Boards whose future must surely now be in doubt.
I agree very much with the emphasis on good governance but how is this to apply to the “self-managed community level partnerships”? And who, in the revised structure proposed, is to be responsible for general hospitals. In the past few years events in Glasgow and Dundee (and south of the Border in Chester and Nottingham for example) suggest that the internal (and external) governance of general hospitals is not beyond improvement.
So, yes, ideas for the reform of the NHS are badly needed but they need to be thought through thoroughly and to be deliverable within a financial envelope which will be shrinking, not expanding, in the next few years.
Ro Pengelly
Thank you for including patient reps within the sentence ‘An overhaul of the structures and governance of the NHS, which should be
undertaken jointly between the Scottish Government, NHS staff, local government and patient representatives.’ within this paper.
I write that because hearing the voices and views of citizens, whether as patients or unpaid carers, is key, not least to stemming misunderstandings and even hearing good ideas! Yes public involvement is a statutory duty placed on e.g. the NHS, and yet already e-briefings are mentioning ‘patient pathways’ but not anything about public involvement. The future has to hold something better than simply relying on Martha’s Rule for feedback.
David Belfall
I very much agree with Ro Pengelly but how are patient “representatives” to be identified? There are occasional public opinion surveys which show broad public support for the NHS and recognition (in general terms) of its inadequacies and the Care Opinion website is important and helpful in enabling patients to share their individual experiences – positive and negative – but there is no more general system for collecting and addressing patient views. Anyone selected – by whom? – to be a patient representative on any cross party commission would be an individual, no doubt with personal views but no access to a wider, national spectrum of patient/public opinion. By contrast there are organisations which represent local authorities, the health commission and carers. There is no equivalent organisation representing patients and in these circumstances I fear that any views the “patient representatives” might express could easily be dismissed as just personal opinions.