AT LEAST 20,000 extra operations a year are to be provided by
the Scottish NHS in an attempt to slash the maximum wait for
treatment to six months, Scotland on Sunday can reveal.
Ministers will attempt to tackle stubbornly long waiting lists by
using a vast chunk of this years £4.4bn extra grant from the
Treasury to provide scores of extra beds and hundreds of additional
doctors and nurses.
Key to the plan is tripling the capacity of the Golden Jubilee
Hospital in Clydebank from 70 beds to 220, allowing the centre to
increase operations from 10,000 to 30,000 a year.
Other moves include a plan to send 1,000 patients a year to private
hospitals and the establishment of English-style diagnostic centres
which assess patients clinical needs and speed up treatment.
The plan is the Scottish Executives response to widespread
criticism that it has been complacent on health issues while the
NHS south of the Border implements dramatic reforms.
UK Health Secretary John Reid has repeatedly seized the headlines
with announcements of bold initiatives and extra resources aimed at
wooing voters disillusioned with Labours record on the NHS. Last
week, Reid declared waiting times south of the Border would be
reduced to 18 weeks by 2008.
Last night, critics of the Executive accused ministers of being
forced to perform a humiliating U-turn on health by adopting
Blairite ideas such as increased use of the private sector and
diagnostic centres.
Ministers insist they have come up with a Scottish solution to
Scotlands problems and, privately, express scepticism that Reid
can deliver on his ambitious 18-week target.
In Scotland, around 100,000 patients are stuck on the official
waiting list, some of whom face delays of up to a year.
Ministers see the former private HCI hospital at Clydebank, renamed
the Golden Jubilee, as key to their plans. The HCI was bought
specifically to tackle waiting list problems and currently
specialises in heart operations.
Health officials will scour hospital records across Scotland to see
if patients are being allowed to languish without treatment who
could otherwise be sent to the Golden Jubilee.
Ministers believe the purchase of the hospital for £37.5m in June
2002 has been one of the success stories of the NHS since
devolution.
The hospital currently has 72 beds but that will be increased to
220. There are 2,100 Scots waiting for some form of heart
operation. Orthopaedic operations, also frequently hit by treatment
delays, will be added to the procedures available.
In addition, ministers want to investigate how they can make more
use of Scotlands eight private hospitals to reduce waiting
lists.
In previous years the NHS in Scotland has sent patients requiring
hip replacements for private treatment as a last-ditch move to
clear some waiting lists.
They will now investigate how the private sector can provide
permanent help. A source said that it could be expected they would
send a maximum of 1,000 patients to the private sector each
year.
Ministers also want to examine whether the English system of
diagnostic centres would work in Scotland.
The centres, which contain advanced medical equipment such as
scanners, provide a middle ground between GPs and hospitals.
If a family doctor suspects a patient has a health problem, he or
she goes first to a diagnostic centre which can pinpoint the
illness, reducing some of the burden on hospital consultants.
Last night, a government source said the Executive was confident
the package of measures would deliver the six-month waiting list
target in Scotland. The source declared Reids 18-week target as
"very ambitious".
The source said: "The Golden Jubilee has been a revelation. The
whole attitude is one of can-do and get people treated as quickly
as possible. It is a truly amazing place. And there is a whole
floor of the building with nothing in it, so we can use it to get
more beds and facilities in there. We think its a fantastic
resource to allow us to get stuck into waiting lists.
"We also want to examine how the private sector can be used on a
more ongoing basis. We have used private hospitals in the past on a
one-off basis to tackle some waiting lists. The only problem is
that the private sector is not big in Scotland, so there is a limit
to how much impact they can have."
Last night, the British Medical Association, the doctors union,
welcomed the plan.
Dr John Garner, chairman of BMA Scotland, said: "All these plans
make a lot of sense and we support them. Since the NHS has bought
the Golden Jubilee Hospital it makes sense to make as much use of
the hospital as possible and use it to its maximum capacity.
"We think that using the private sector in Scotland is a good idea,
but Im not sure how much impact it will have because the private
sector in Scotland is relatively small. The Executive is right to
consider the use of diagnostic centres, and we would suggest that
the private sector could be employed to offer diagnostic services
while the NHS builds up its capacity."
But Pat Dawson, the head of policy and public affairs at the Royal
College of Nursing Scotland, said she had doubts: "Its easy to
talk about expanding the Golden Jubilee, but they will find a
problem in finding the nurses to staff the expansion. The west of
Scotland has a serious problem in recruiting and retaining nurses
and what we need is action on that."
Shona Robison, the SNPs health spokeswoman, said: "The expansion
of the Golden Jubilee is fine, but where will they get the staff
for these posts? There are still critical shortages. And every
pound paid to the private sector is a pound not spent on building
capacity in the NHS in Scotland."
David Davidson, the Scottish Tories health spokesman, said: "Most
of these proposals are very welcome, but the moves on the private
sector and the diagnostic centres are a stunning U-turn by the
Executive."
There are eight main private hospitals in Scotland with more than
300 beds in total, carrying out thousands of operations and
treatments a year.
Bupa Murrayfield in Edinburgh has 69 beds.
Most of the operations there are in orthopaedics, such as hip and
knee replacements, a speciality where NHS hospitals have found it
particularly hard to meet targets.
Gair Stott, general manager of Murrayfield, said: "We are keen to
work more closely with the NHS if we can get a long-term
commitment. We would not be looking at a one-off, we would be
looking at increasing capacity to take on more NHS patients."
http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=735072004
