Our model of healthcare will be transformed across the region

I was appointed as chairman of NHS Tayside 18 months ago and over that period I have been immensely privileged to witness, at first hand, the dedication of the staff of all disciplines who work day and night to ensure safe and effective healthcare across the region.

The people of Tayside – whether in cities or in rural areas – rightly expect high quality, person-centred healthcare that is appropriate to their needs and I want to use this opportunity to reassure everyone that NHS Tayside is fully committed to delivering this.

It is clear that there are significant challenges facing the NHS across the country.

Our population is growing older and this inevitably places increased demands and increased pressure on our services.

Advances in medical care mean that effective prevention and treatment for a wide range of conditions can be delivered, but this brings challenges around how and where we can transform our more traditional models of care to reflect these changes in treatment.

The Scottish Government’s National Clinical Strategy points to moving the focus of care away from hospitals to more community-based settings.

Parallel to this is the initiative launched by Scotland’s chief medical officer, Realistic Medicine, that rightly makes the point that clinicians must seek to avoid treatments that are either inappropriate or of limited impact and which, in some instances, have potential to do more harm than good.

In Tayside we deliver services in Perth and Kinross, Dundee and Angus, using facilities that were developed when there were three separate healthcare organisations.

This, inevitably, has resulted in a healthcare model that is heavily dependent on inpatient beds, some of which have relatively low capacity.

In fact, our property footprint is the highest in Scotland per head of population and the impact of this is that the cost of an inpatient bed in Tayside is the highest in mainland Scotland.

Therefore, we must redesign our model of healthcare across the area.

Our transformation programme sets out how we will do this, including our plans for redesigning surgical care, unscheduled care, planned care, mental health services and primary care, among others.

The key component to delivering these changes is the development of Health and Social Care Integration with close partnership working between NHS Tayside and local authorities in Angus, Dundee and Perth and Kinross already well under way.

The integrated joint boards that lead this integration are critical to the success of our Five Year Transformation Programme and I am delighted that there is already clear evidence that this joint approach is working well.

Lastly, I cannot forecast in detail all the changes that will occur over the next five years, both in terms of healthcare services and also fluctuations to our budgets.

However, I can give the people of Tayside a reassurance that the staff of NHS Tayside will continue to work tirelessly to support and develop highquality services across the region in our acute sites and in the community.