Scottish health secretary Shona Robison has unveiled a plan to increase the pace of health reform to see more services delivered in communities
A £128 million new Scottish Government plan aims to increase the pace of Scotland’s health and care reforms and reduce hospital bed blocking.
The national delivery plan comes a few weeks after MSPs on Scotland’s health committee published a report saying change was moving too slowly.
A series of actions have been set out in the plan, aimed at ensuring Scotland is able to support the care of its aging population, which is already putting a strain on acute care services such as hospitals.
It includes plans to reform GP services, invest more in health and social care integration, ensure better NHS planning and boost public health and mental health services.
The plan will be supported by £128m of change funding in 2017-18.
It aims to see unscheduled hospital bed days cut by 400,000 by 2018. This will be a 10% reduction in emergency unplanned admissions, which tend to be elderly patients suffering falls and other sudden health problems.
Routine check-ups or test results will be handled by community based health professionals under the plan and by 2021 everyone who needs it should have access to hospice, palliative or end of life care.
GP practices will also have access to pharmacists with advanced clinical skills by 2022 and the aim is to recruit an additional 1,000 paramedics.
Announcing the plan, Robison said: “The plan I am setting out today puts actions and timescales to an already established direction of travel which we know has the broad support of healthcare professionals, charities and patient groups.
“It recognises that we must up the pace of change if we’re to deliver modern, sustainable health services and that local health boards and integration partnerships have an important role to play in taking this forward over the next year and beyond.
“Delivery of the plan will be supported by record levels of investment in our health and care services – with extra resources for the NHS and for social care - plus dedicated funding of over £125 million in the coming year to help deliver change on the ground.
“It will also mean a shift in how we allocate these resources – with substantially more money going to our community health service in the coming years.”
The government wants to see more services and more care delivered closer to home. Robison vowed however that there would not be a reduction in Scotland’s 14 health boards.
Earlier this month MSPs on the Scottish Parliament's health committee called for a “fundamental change” in the way the 31 new bodies created to managed Scotland’s £8 billion health and social care spending operate.
The criticised Scotland’s Health and Social Care Partnerships (HSCPs) because the majority started 2016 without a clear budget plan.
