Doctors and nurses warn Nicola Sturgeon will have to go further in her major recovery plan to fix an NHS they claim is “close to failing” in places.
The British Medical Association and Royal College of Nursing sounded the alarm on the day the First Minister published the Scottish Government’s blueprint for the under-pressure health service.
It promises to tackle a backlog, increase capacity by 10% and bring back face-to-face GP appointments.
The plan sets out SNP Government pledges to spend £400million in treatment centres, including sites at Aberdeen, Inverness and Perth.
It identifies a workforce recruitment problem and promises a new strategy to keep staff and attract medics from overseas by the end of the year.
We cannot hope to deliver what is currently demanded of our NHS – let alone an extra 10%.
– Dr Lewis Morrison, BMA Scotland
Ms Sturgeon said the plan will “drive the recovery”.
But it was branded “thin” by Holyrood opposition parties who claimed it was a collection of reheated promises with no mention of major problems such as “long covid” – a debilitating but little understood condition.
‘Close to failing’
Dr Lewis Morrison, chairman of the British Medical Association in Scotland, said the plan must note “years of understaffing”.
He added: “The evidence is clear the NHS is struggling and close to failing in places.
“It’s August, not winter, and elective work is being cancelled, A&E waits are high in places and demand for GP time has spiralled.”
He said the report shows welfare of staff is being taken seriously but cautioned against any over-reliance on recruiting from overseas.
He added: “The lack of explicit acknowledgement of the staff shortages is disappointing.
“We cannot hope to deliver what is currently demanded of our NHS – let alone an extra 10%.”
Dr Morrison continued: “Overall – this plan is in many ways only a start. It contains some good things, some things that need much more discussion, but it also has many worrying gaps.”
Julie Lamberth, of the Royal College of Nurising Scotland board, said: “To date the Scottish Government’s workforce planning has been woefully poor and resulted in us entering the pandemic with thousands of nursing and midwifery vacancies.
“A commitment to national and international recruitment does not address the need to retain our existing experienced nursing workforce or ensure the capacity and skills are available to support those starting out in nursing.”
What does the First Minister promise?
The First Minister earlier said she want the health service in Scotland to be “stronger than ever before”.
Ms Sturgeon joined Health Secretary Humza Yousaf to unveil the proposals on Wednesday, which aim to tackle the backlogs that have built up during the Covid-19 pandemic and increase NHS capacity by 10%.
Before the Covid crisis, Scotland’s hospitals cared for around 270,000 inpatients and people needing day case procedures each year, as well as some 1.4 million outpatient appointments.
National treatment centres
The Scottish Government already pledged to invest more than £400 million in national treatment centres, which it says could mean an additional 40,000 more planned operations and procedures to take place each year.
The Aberdeen centre is scheduled for 2025, specialising in endoscopy and CT/MRI scans. One in Inverness is due to open next year, with services for ophthalmology and orthopaedics.
NHS Tayside is getting a centre in Perth with services including endoscopy.
Spending in primary care will be increased by 25%, with support for GPs, community pharmacists, dentists and optometrists.
To reduce waiting for diagnostic tests, £29 million will be invested, with ministers saying this should allow 78,000 more procedures to be carried out this year alone, with this rising to 90,000 more tests each year from 2025-26.
Plans are also being put in place to recruit thousands more staff, with £11 million being spent on national and international campaigns aimed at taking on 1,500 staff for national treatment centres, as well as 1,000 mental health link workers in the community and 800 additional GPs.
And to help vital staff, £8 million has been set aside to support the mental health and wellbeing of health and care workers.
Ms Sturgeon, visiting the National Jubilee Hospital in Clydebank, said: “This plan will drive the recovery of our NHS – not just to its pre-pandemic level, but beyond.
“As we maintain our resilience against Covid-19 and other pressures, the Scottish Government is providing targeted investment to increase capacity, reform the system and ultimately get everyone the treatment they need as quickly as possible.”
‘Embarrassingly thin’
Holyrood parties criticised the plan.
Scottish Tory health spokeswoman Annie Wells said: “This delayed plan is mostly a lift from their manifesto and a regurgitation of undelivered promises from failed SNP health ministers of old,” she said.
“It’s embarrassingly thin – made for PR purposes, not for our NHS.”
Scottish Labour health spokeswoman Jackie Baillie said: “Today’s SNP NHS recovery plan is as underwhelming as it is overdue.
“Frankly, this plan does not even begin to chart a path to the full re-mobilisation of our NHS. And targets promised before the election have disappeared from the plan.
“Most disappointing of all is that the SNP has entirely failed to comprehend the size of the NHS backlog.”
Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton said: “With A&E departments more stretched than ever and more than 200,000 operations lost to the pandemic, patients and NHS staff deserved more than wafer thin commitments and re-packaged promises.”