The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Incredible NHS turnaround
Understaffed and overstretched. Is it any wonder front line health workers in Tayside were failing young people suffering from mental health issues so badly?
If you rewind to last January, just a third were being treated within 18 weeks of referral. That meant 669 vulnerable children and adolescents went without help for more than four months.
Indeed, the health service’s information services department revealed back then that 599 youngsters across Angus, Dundee and Perthshire had to wait more than six months for treatment. What an utter disgrace. Incredibly – and thankfully – the numbers have undergone an amazing turnaround in the last 12 months.
New figures from ISD Scotland show 95.4% of youngsters are now being treated within the target set by the Scottish Government.
Even better, NHS Tayside general manager for medicine, Carol Goodman, claims “all new referrals for children and young people are now being seen within 18 weeks.”
It’s difficult to argue that it is nothing short of an incredible achievement by the health board to turn those figures around. What’s made the difference, then? The main transformation, it would seem, is the fact there are more specialists to the team.
Ms Goodman said: “Additional nursing and medical staff… made a significant impact on reducing waiting times.”
It doesn’t sound like rocket science, does it?
Especially when you consider health bosses knew something was up ahead of the rock bottom stats being released and hired nine additional bodies shortly before the figures were made public.
Back when I last wrote a column about this, I spoke to several sources within the sector, who described workings locally as “chaotic” and sometimes “lazy”.
No surprise, then, that NHS Tayside “has been undertaking a detailed improvement programme for Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services designed to reduce outpatient waiting times,” according to Ms Goodman.
Alas, there’s no further explanation as to what this might be but we can take heart from the fact that it seems to be working wonders.
Let’s just hope it continues. NHS Tayside was given more than £100 million from the Scottish Government to develop mental health services in the area, some of which was used to build Murray Royal Hospital in Perth.
Suicide rates are also falling in Scotland, with much credit going to the Scottish Government’s Choose Life suicide prevention strategy, which ran from 2002 to 2013.
And what is worth remembering is ministers at Holyrood are actually measuring performance and showing more of an interest than their counterparts south of the border.
But money is tight. Audit Scotland warned in October that NHS Tayside failed to break even for the third year in a row, relying on a £14 million loan from the Scottish government.
As well as repaying the loan, the board needs to make savings of £27 million this year.
It’s almost crunch time. What happens then?
With such “savings” demanded, would staff cuts be a surprise?
Hopefully not, because that’s when the vulnerable suffer.
Additional nursing and medical staff... made a significant impact’