Call to merge health boards in Scotland to tackle crisis
Opposition politicians are calling for Scotland’s health boards to be reduced from 14 to three to reduce “bureaucracy”, as separate figures show the cost of delayed discharge bed days has hit £1.2 billion in the last decade.
The proposal from Scottish Labour follows similar calls from Alex Salmond’s Alba party recently which said the combined cost of the salaries of executive management teams currently sits at between £12,265,000 and £12,730,000.
Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland’s Sunday Show, Scottish Labour MSP Paul Sweeney said: "We've got 14 territorial health boards across Scotland – for a country of five and a half million, it’s way too cluttered.
"Labour has proposed to rationalise that down to three. Speaking to clinical professionals on the front line, they're saying systems don’t talk to each another, there's different procurement systems, there’s way too much duplication.”
It comes as Labour says the cost of delayed discharge, or bed blocking, has reached more than £1.2 billion.
The party’s health spokeswoman Dame Jackie Baillie (pictured) said more than four million bed days have been lost to delayed discharge since 2014.
She highlighted a pledge from the then-health secretary Shona Robison to “eradicate” delayed discharge in 2015.
Dame Jackie said: “Years on from the SNP promising to end the deadly and costly practice of delayed discharge, the problem still persists and is in fact getting worse.
“This whopping cost to the taxpayer has built up on Nicola Sturgeon’s watch and the disastrous [then] health secretary, Humza Yousaf, has allowed it to soar.”
“We cannot have patients left in hospital unnecessarily and the public purse drained due to poor provision of care for those leaving hospital.
“It’s time for Humza Yousaf to face the music and hand the role over to someone who is prepared to tackle the issue.”
Labour calculated the total cost of delayed discharge bed days using data from Public Health Scotland.
A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “There are various, and often complex, reasons why individuals are delayed in hospital and it is critical that people are cared for in the right setting and that hospital beds are there for those who need them.
“In addition to the £3.6 million provided this year to support growth of hospital at home services for older people, we have also invested additional funds of £12 million as part of our winter plan to increase capacity and provide services in people’s own homes where appropriate.
“Significant additional funding has also been allocated to support social care. From April 2024 adult social care workers delivering direct care in commissioned services will see their pay increase to a minimum of £12 per hour.
“We continue to work closely with health and social care partnerships to address delays and support people out of acute settings and back into the community or home as quickly as possible.
“We have also been supporting partnerships to create the necessary capacity to deal with emerging pressures over winter, and to ensure people are assessed and discharged with the appropriate care package as quickly as possible.”