Not against NHS reform

Published on Wednesday 9 July 2008 21:46

I found the content of your leader, "It's time the NHS took its medicine" (9 July), surprising given the very positive coverage of the Scottish Government's vision for the NHS elsewhere in your paper.

To accuse me of being interested only in ideology and not delivery perhaps demonstrates your misunderstanding of what we are achieving in the Scottish health service. You are right that the Scottish Government is opposed to privatisation and commercialisation, which we consider to be damaging to the effectiveness of the NHS. However, we are in no way opposed to reform of the NHS, and it is a mistake for you to suggest in your editorial that the two are one and the same.

There can be no doubt about our commitment to delivering improvements in NHS efficiency and patient care. Take waiting times, where Scotland has achieved significantly better waiting times for inpatients and day cases than England. Scotland also performs better in diagnostic tests and other areas such as angiography, where challenging targets have been set. In areas where target setting has been established more recently than in England, eg outpatient waits, Scotland's performance is continuing to improve markedly.

Our agenda is to make the NHS as a whole work better together. For example, we have developed managed clinical networks which join up all the services patients need, ranging from high technology tests and hospital treatment, to nursing and support in the community. The benefits of this can be seen, for example in relation to cancer outcomes, where the five-year survival rates for main cancers in men and women reveal evidence of slightly better outcomes in Scotland than in England.

Our reforms are all designed to integrate different parts of the system, in contrast to the competition agenda in England that drives apart elements that would be better working together. We are putting a clearer focus on making the system work for patients, not forcing patients to suit the system. It's an approach that is in keeping with Scotland's strong public service ethos and, most importantly of all; it is an approach that is working.

NICOLA STURGEON

Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing

The Scottish Government