Scottish ministers have been warned that north and north-east patients would suffer if local health boards were abolished and replaced with new “super-boards.”
Concerns have been expressed after former Health Secretary Alex Neil called for a merger of NHS Grampian, NHS Tayside and NHS Fife.
He was speaking after NHS Grampian’s chief executive Malcolm Wright was drafted in to help run crisis-hit NHS Tayside last week, following the departure of its senior managers amid a mismanagement row.
But opposition MSPs last night warned the Holyrood government against any move to scrap the country’s 14 regional boards.
Scottish Liberal Democrat health spokesman Alex Cole-Hamilton said: “NHS Tayside has suffered from colossal mismanagement but the answer to that isn’t to abolish the local health board and those around it.
“Centralisation of health boards would inevitably lead to specialist services being merged and longer journeys for patients.
“This would be bad for patients across Tayside, Fife and the north-east. People from the Borders to Orkney and Shetland don’t want this either.”
Scottish Labour’s health spokesman Anas Sarwar said: “Structural reform is worthy of consideration, but that won’t resolve the problems we have here and now.
“This is not an isolated case at NHS Tayside – this is a direct result of a decade of SNP mismanagement of our NHS and a failure of leadership from Health Secretary Shona Robison.”
Six health boards in the north – Tayside, Grampian, Highland, Orkney, Shetland and Western Isles – are already increasingly working together through the North of Scotland Planning Group, which critics have previously warned could form the basis of a new “super-board”.
A Scottish Government spokesman said: “We have been strengthening regional planning and delivery in recent months.
“This will allow faster decisions to be made at a regional level and in combination with the more local decision makers allow for higher quality care for those who need it.
“The combination of national, regional and local decision making give us the best of all worlds to ensure high quality care.”
