Doctors’ chief: NHS heading for breakdown

SCOTLAND’S health service is heading for a ‘system breakdown’ that will put the care of patients at risk, doctors’ leaders warned yesterday.

Dr Peter Bennie, the chairman of the British Medical Association (BMA) in Scotland, launched a scathing attack on SNP ministers for failing to acknowledge the crisis facing the NHS.

He said he is ‘fed up’ with being told the numbers of doctors have increased because rising demand means that is not enough.

The challenges are so severe, he said, that hospitals cannot be expected to continue providing the services they do at present.

On the BBC’s Sunday Politics Scotland programme, Dr Bennie said: ‘We want politicians from all parties to be honest about this.

‘If you look at the recruitment position, we’re running vacancies right across the country – urban, rural, hospital, GP.

‘And we’re fed up with a mantra that says from the government we have more doctors than ever before.

‘The point is we need more again in order to be able to provide the service people require.

‘The relevant question is do we have enough doctors, do we have enough nurses, do we have enough staff outside the health service to provide the care that people need? And at present, we don’t because that requirement goes up year after year.’

He said the rising costs of drugs and technology, as well as increasing demand, means that funding would have to rise by 4 per cent a year for the NHS to continue to ‘keep doing everything we are doing just now’.

And he said that if more money is not provided there needs to be a debate about where the cutbacks need to happen.

He added: ‘The first step is to move away from the impression the Government tries to give that things are OK, because they’re not. We simply don’t have enough staffing and enough financing. We’re stretched pretty much to breaking point, just trying to keep things going.

‘The majority of staff are working way beyond what they’re actually supposed to be doing.

‘Eventually it leads to system breakdown.’

Scottish Labour health spokesman Anas Sarwar said: ‘This is an incredibly serious warning. A decade of SNP mismanagement has increased pressure on staff in every part of our health service.’

Health Secretary Shona Robison said: ‘We recognise change is needed and last month published the Health and Social Care delivery plan to set out the actions and timescales to support healthcare professionals, charities and patient groups. It recognises that we must up the pace of change.’