Patients paying price for SNP health fiasco

BACK in 2014, the SNP claimed a Yes vote was the only option to safeguard the future of the NHS. Its credentials as champions of the health service were highly questionable then – and even more preposterous now.

Today we reveal that many vulnerable cancer patients are having to travel hundreds of miles for treatment, often at their own expense. The extra burden this places on families at an already intensely stressful time – physically, mentally and financially – is enormous.

Yes, in certain cases, travelling beyond the boundaries of your health board area, particularly in rural locations, is unavoidable. But our damning investigation has found some patients in the north of Scotland must travel up to 600 miles round trip for life-saving treatment.

At least 20,000 patients have spent up to a day travelling in order to attend key appointments, treatments and follow-ups in the past three years. And some are even having to be treated south of the Border – including trips to hospitals in Cumbria, Newcastle and Northumbria.

Contrast these bleak findings with the grandstanding of Nicola Sturgeon, who never misses an opportunity to highlight the alleged failings of the English NHS.

In Scotland, some NHS office workers have been asked to carry out cleaning duties in hospitals over the winter, as an increase in flu cases fuelled a staffing crisis.

There was even a rare apology from Miss Sturgeon, who earlier this month said sorry to those whose treatment was delayed.

It emerged last year that Scotland’s NHS is short of more than 470 consultants and more than 3,200 nurses, and failing to meet many waiting time targets. The Auditor General warned that more patients are waiting longer to be seen, and most waiting time targets are not being met. Caroline Gardner said there is ‘widespread agreement that healthcare must be delivered differently if it is to withstand growing pressure on services’.

Audit Scotland has found the service is ‘struggling’, and the pressures on the system may be starting to affect patient care.

The report last October found that demand on services is soaring, and over the previous year the number of patients waiting for outpatient appointments had increased by 15 per cent. The number waiting for inpatient treatment grew by 12 per cent. It also revealed that the NHS ‘failed to meet’ seven out of eight key waiting time targets – and performance on many of them had worsened.

Health Secretary Shona Robison clings to her brief, and insists ‘we’re taking our NHS forward with a twin programme of investment and reform’. Amid the platitudes, thousands of Scots are paying a heavy price for the SNP’s decade of calamitous mismanagement of a vital public service.