SACK YOUR LAME DUCK MINISTER
As thousands of patients wait longer for treatment and key NHS targets are missed AGAIN, opposition MSPs tell Sturgeon:
THE SNP’S performance on NHS waiting times has sunk to a record low, sparking calls for the Health Secretary to be sacked.
Patients are facing soaring delays, with hospitals across the country failing to meet key treatment targets.
Waiting time figures on inpatient treatment, outpatient appointments and diagnostic tests have plummeted to their worst levels since the current targets were introduced, dropping by around 10 per cent in the past year. Almost one in five patients is failing to get hospital treatment within 12 weeks – in breach of a legal guarantee set up by the SNP.
Health Secretary Shona Robison yesterday announced an expert group to help battle the crisis.
But opposition parties demanded the ‘lame duck’ minister be replaced
in an expected forthcoming reshuffle. Labour health spokesman Anas Sarwar said: ‘The SNP Government makes promises to patients and then doesn’t give the NHS the resources it needs to meet those standards. This cannot go on.’
He added: ‘Ministers who helped create the problems can’t be the ones to solve them. It is time for Shona Robison to go.
‘Shona Robison is the SNP’s lame duck Health Secretary.’
Yesterday, Nicola Sturgeon’s spokesman insisted that the First Minister still has confidence in Miss Robison, saying: ‘The FM has confidence in all ministers.’
However, he refused to damp down Holyrood speculation that Miss Sturgeon will announce a reshuffle within days.
It has been predicted Miss Robison – as well as others including Communities Secretary Angela Constance, Environment Secretary Roseanna Cunningham and Economy Secretary Keith Brown – could be in line for a change of jobs as part of an overhaul of the Cabinet.
Figures published yesterday show that In the three months ending June 2017, only 81. per cent of inpatients in Scotland were treated within 12 weeks, compared to 91.3 per cent a year ago.
At the end of June, only 7 per cent of outpatients on the waiting list had been waiting 12 weeks or less, compared to 85.7 per cent a year ago, while 82.9 per cent of patients waiting for diagnostic tests had been waiting less than six weeks, compared to 92.2 per cent a year ago.
Charities hit out at the failures on waiting times for diagnostic tests, which can include scans for cancer patients.
Gregor McNie, Cancer Research UK’s senior public affairs manager for Scotland, said: ‘Patients must be diagnosed and treated early if they are to have the best chance of surviving cancer.
‘Waiting so long for tests adds to the anxiety anyone who has possible cancer symptoms feels.’ Lib Dem health spokesman Alex Cole-Hamilton said Miss Sturgeon’s NHS treatment time guarantee ‘is not worth the paper it is written on’.
The guarantee is supposed to give a legal right to patients of hospital treatment within 12 weeks of a decision to treat them. But 13,357 patients waited more than 12 weeks during the quarter to June 2017, compared to 6,951 a year earlier.
Responding to the figures, Miss Robison announced an expert group to reduce waiting times and improve services. It follows £50million to improve waiting times in 2017-18 announced earlier this year.
The Elective Access Collaborative Programme will include experts from the Scottish Government, NHS Scotland and the Royal Colleges and will be led by Professor Derek Bell, chairman of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, and NHS Fife chief executive Paul Hawkins. Miss Robison said: ‘Today’s announcement will build on our earlier injection of funding to reduce waiting lists, by providing the expert support to transform scheduled care and put the services on a sustainable footing for the future.’
She added: ‘We’re at a crucial transition stage in our reforms of the health service – the much called for shift in resources to primary, community and social care services is beginning to take effect, but this will take time to deliver better and more appropriate alternatives to acute care.
‘However, it is still crucial that patients are seen in a timely manner and all boards have been asked to produce recovery plans for their elective care services.’
Professor Bell, who led improvements in A&E waiting times, said: ‘We’re convinced an elective access collaborative programme would address the significant and growing pressures in elective and diagnostic services.’
‘It is time for Shona Robison to go’