SNP's first priority must be to restore public confidence in NHS
Underfunded social care services are causing real problems for the NHS in Scotland
As Scotland’s political world was gearing up to the election, one of my constituents, Neil Smith found himself stuck in hospital. The 79-year-old could have been discharged two days after his operation with a care package, but there were none available because of cuts to local care services.
In the end, Neil was only eventually discharged after a week because friends and family pledged to be on 24-hour call. He was finally contacted about care provision on March 17 – three weeks after it should have begun. Neil told me: “I really don’t want this to happen to anyone else."
But the reality is that it's happening to thousands every month, with an average of 1,923 people delayed in hospital every day in March. This is all the more disappointing when you consider the SNP first pledged to end delayed discharge in 2015.
£30 million wasted
As with so many of the SNP’s pledges, the headline sounds good – tackling delayed discharge is key to getting our NHS working again. The problem is the delivery.
The best way to reduce delayed discharge is to invest in social care, but the SNP has done the opposite.
Not only did they waste £30 million on a discredited National Care Service Bill that didn't pay for a single extra carer, but it cut £38m promised to deliver fair work and improve terms and conditions in social care.
Health and social care partnerships, which actually deliver social care, faced a budget gap of £560m last year. The result is that 7,728 people were waiting on a social care assessment at the start of April, up 23 per cent on the same time last year.
Social care may not generate the catchiest election slogans but it matters if the Scottish Government is to free up hospital beds and allow vulnerable people to live with dignity. Investing in social care has to be a top priorities for the new SNP government.
READ MORE: Doctors call for Holyrood to depoliticise NHS as Swinney writes to opponents expect Reform for 'co-operation'
Ineffectual GP walk-in clinics
Primary care matters too, but under the SNP the share of the NHS budget going on primary care has slumped from 11 to around 6 per cent.
The SNP's plan to roll out GP walk-in clinics has been heavily criticised by doctors' organisations as ineffectual, and one of the first walk-in clinics treated just 183 patients in the first five weeks. The government should listen to frontline workers and invest more in primary and social care to reduce pressure on hospitals.
Then there are the hundreds of thousands of Scots on NHS waiting lists. Incredibly, during the election campaign, the SNP boasted about reducing waiting lists when there are still 3,666 waits over two years for hospital treatment in Scotland. In England, the figure was less than 200.
READ MORE: An NHS consultant's plea to the Scottish Government: A&E crisis demands bold action, not rhetoric
Two-tier healthcare system for rich and poor
Tackling this requires structural reform so that the money follows the patient, while investing in modern hospital equipment like AI-enabled scanners.
The SNP may have secured another five years in power, but that does not do anything to change the fact that its legacy is a two-tier health system where Scots who can afford it pay for treatment and those who can’t are left languishing in pain.
The new Scottish Government’s first priority must be to restore confidence in our NHS. But it’s only by delivering that it can do so.
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