GPs’ funding and hospital beds cut ... but NHS bill rises to £12bn

FAMILY doctors, pharmacists and dentists have had their funding slashed despite overall NHS spending in Scotland topping £12billion.

The number of hospital beds has also been cut by more than 400 in a year, according to the latest health service annual costs published yesterday.

Opposition parties seized on the figures, saying the NHS has reached ‘crisis point’.

But Health Secretary Jeane Freeman said the Scottish Government was making ‘good progress’ on improving it.

NHS Scotland operating costs amounted to just over £12billion in 2017-18, a 1.5 per cent real-terms increase on 2016-17.

But there was a real-terms fall in spending on the family health sector, which includes GP services, prescription drugs and dental and ophthalmic services.

The share of NHS spending devoted to GP practices fell from 7.3 per cent in 2013-14 to 6.8 per cent this year.

The total expenditure on family health services totalled £2.6billion in 2017-18. This was a real-terms decline of 0.4 per cent compared to 2016-17.

The report also showed there were 20,911 beds in hospitals in 2017-18 – a 7.2 per cent fall in five years, and a reduction of 429 in just 12 months. Spending on hospitals north of the Border was £6.6billion last year – up 0.1 per cent in real terms – with the sector amounting for 55 per cent of NHS costs.

Scottish Lib Dem health spokesman Alex Cole-Hamilton said: ‘The SNP’s mismanagement has brought GP surgeries to crisis point.

‘A quarter of practices now have vacancies, up from just 9 per cent in five years.’

He added: ‘The Scottish Gov- ernment must end the underfunding of general practice and put a mental health practitioner in every surgery, easing some of the pressure on GPs.’

Scottish Tory health spokesman Miles Briggs said the fact Scotland has an increasing and ageing population means the NHS cannot afford to lose more beds. He added: ‘The number of beds should be going up – not reducing.’

A spokesman for the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh said: ‘For the NHS to survive financially, a proper funding plan must be in place.

‘The cost of running the Scottish NHS rose to £12billion in 2017-18, indicating that we are spending £1.5billion more than we were five years ago.

‘A range of factors may explain this increase, including people living for longer with multiple health conditions.’

Miss Freeman said the figures showed ‘good progress to our twin-track approach of record investment, coupled with reform in health and social care services’.

She added: ‘Driven by reform and extra investment, we remain on track to deliver more than half of frontline NHS spending in community health services by the end of the parliament.’

‘Brought surgeries to crisis point’