Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
Reassurances over jobs at NHS Tayside
SCOTTISH Health Secretary and Dundee East MSP Shona Robison has reassured NHS Tayside staff that their jobs are “not under threat”.
The Cabinet Secretary for Health, Wellbeing and Sport made the comments in an exclusive sit-down interview with the Tele.
Ms Robison said she had met with topflight executives and ground-level NHS staff to discuss the findings of an independent report which had called for an “immediate review of staffing levels”.
She said: “The plans that NHS Tayside deliver have to ensure good quality patient services continue.
“Staff should be reassured that the no compulsory redundancy policy remains and their jobs are not under threat.
“They need to reassure staff that they have a job, that their jobs are not under threat, but the way services are delivered may change. I get a sense from the staff side that they want to see change. What they want to see is leadership and have confidence that the plans will be delivered in a proper, transparent and fair way.”
Conceding that the health service for Tayside was in a “challenging” situation and that it was an “outlier” in public spending, she said it was expected to have made “demonstrable” progress in making savings by the end of the year.
Ms Robison added that prescribing costs — which account for Tayside’s largest amount of overspend at £6.7m — needed to be addressed as does the board’s spending on expensive agency staff. She said: “There is a lot of information in this report which points towards an imbalance in the way that NHS Tayside deploys its services.
“The chief nursing officer needs to be working with all boards to — as part of their requirement to reduce agency spend — get them to look at how they could be better at filling outstanding posts.”
A draft report by Audit Scotland suggested the board was in an “extremely challenging position” as it geared up to make £45.8m of savings this year. The board has been granted permission to suspend paying back £33.2m in loans to the Scottish Government in order to balance its books.
Ms Robison added: “NHS Tayside has to get back into financial balance. They need to be able to live within their means. At the moment, they aren’t doing that – and that has to change.”