WORRIES over the cost of living may have replaced Covid as a daily preoccupation for most of us, but the NHS continues to face a crippling pandemic hangover.
This year - 2022/23 - was supposed to be year one in the Scottish Government's NHS Recovery Plan, published on August 25 last year.
It envisioned NHS activity not just returning to pre-pandemic levels, but exceeding them with an extra 27,500 inpatient and day case procedures being carried out this year - an uplift of 10 per cent.
However, figures for April to June this year show the actual number of elective procedures performed still stagnating at 27% below pre-pandemic averages. Even compared to 2021, activity was down 1.6%.
READ MORE: Private firms invited to bid for £150m NHS contract to cut waiting times
The Scottish Government, which blamed persistently high Covid rates for the figures, is now turning to the private sector for help.
On the one hand, there is a pressing need to increase physical capacity. Half of the10 National Treatment Centres - the dedicated elective hubs designed to cut waiting times for everything from hip replacements to MRI scans - are running behind schedule. All three of the NTCs due to open in 2022 will not become operational until at least early 2023.
Modular units provide a stop-gap alternative to creating the ring-fenced, 'Covid-free' spaces needed to relieve pressure on acute hospitals.
The biggest obstacle of all, however, is staffing. Unsurprisingly the £150m contract expects suppliers to provide the workforce to carry out everything from heart surgery to virtual mental health consultations.
READ MORE: The NHS cannot 'live with' Covid - we need a Plan B
The NHS already buys in agency nurses and locum doctors to beef up ailing rotas, but there is something slightly peculiar in the idea of NHS patients being treated on a cancer ward created out of a privately-supplied pre-fab unit and staffed entirely by, essentially, "private" doctors and nurses.
Patients might welcome anything to speed up treatment - but this changes what we mean by "NHS". Possibly for good.
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