The Health Secretary Shona Robison continues to face major pressure over the performance of the NHS in Scotland.
To an extent she is a victim of her own rhetoric. She offered up a hostage to fortune in a 2015 interview when she said she was “absolutely determined” to “eradicate” so-called bed blocking –or “delayed discharge” – within the following year.
Three years on, those words have come back to haunt her. Do they amount to a broken promise? Perhaps not but Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard says this means £392m has been squandered, using the Scottish Government’s own pricing, since Ms Robison’s over-confident statement. In Lothian alone, the NHS has spent £28m unnecessarily keeping people in hospital who are fit to go home but cannot be discharged - usually because of inadequate social care provision. Almost exactly 75 per cent of the patients who are held up in hospital are there because the right support they need to recuperate or to live independently at home is not there.
NHS Lothian is to encourage relatives to do more to help – which is a realistic response too financial pressures but may not be popular or practical for many families.
Labour claims the money spent on delayed discharges could have been spent instead on operations, training or just more doctors and nurses. This is misleading. Any savings would, and should be transferred to fund more and better social care in communities around Scotland.
It is worth acknowledging that the bed-blocking statistics are improving slowly. But this is rather like boasting that the dam isn’t fixed, but the water is leaking through it more slowly. Nicola Sturgeon’s counter-attack against Mr Leonard – accusing him of caring more about politics than patients– was weak.
AS for Ms Robison, she seems to be constantly fire-fighting, under fire over cancelled operations and missed A&E targets. She has some good news to tell: high levels of satisfaction among patients, a reduction in cancer mortality, and record staffing levels.
It may not be good enough. Ms Sturgeon continues to stand by her health secretary, but for how long?
Scottish LibDem leader Willie Rennie warned at First Ministers Questions yesterday, it may not be up to her – implying the health secretary might face a vote of no confidence in the Autumn.
This may be an empty threat. The Scottish Greens, who have won concessions from the SNP in return for budget support, and who share the goal of independence, may be reluctant to support such a move. However there comes a point where their silence on the ongoing debate over the problems of Scotland’s NHS is neither credible nor sustainable . Ms Robison had better hope that point doesn’t come soon.
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