Our NHS is on the brink, here is how we start to fix it - Jackie Baillie

This is the week of clearing up wrapping paper, taking down the Christmas tree and getting ready to return to work.

But for many doctors, nurses and paramedics, the work never stopped. Increasingly, though, these shifts are pushing them to the brink.

A new survey by the British Medical Association Scotland gives a snapshot of that pressure. One doctor said “it has become the norm to be operating at 115-120 percent capacity” with up to 20 admissions sleeping in the emergency department overnight.

Another wrote “we feel like we are sinking… the lack of elective beds means we continue to cancel patients.”

A third warned: “This may be the last year of universal GP coverage as practices, surviving beyond breaking point, collapse”.

Nearly all of those surveyed feared the NHS would not cope with the likely increase in demand this winter. This harrowing testimony from hospitals and clinics is very different to the breezy report the SNP published just before Christmas on its NHS Recovery Plan.

Marking its own homework, the government glossed over its failure to meet targets on recruitment and reducing waiting times. Meanwhile, rather than reducing delayed discharge, the SNP has presided over it rising to a record high.

But a new year is a chance for the Scottish Government to turn over a new leaf, so here’s my suggestions of what it should do.

First, tackle delayed discharge – an SNP failure which has cost the taxpayer billions. It has left thousands of Scots stuck in hospital limbo this Christmas while others wait in corridors because there aren’t enough beds. Yet rather than making it possible for people to return home safely, the SNP have wasted £30million on a social care bill that did not pay for a single extra carer. Scottish Labour would work with local authorities, care providers and charities as well as our NHS to ensure that we have a social care system suitable for modern needs.

Second, the SNP has spent millions on expensive agency staff rather than recruiting and retaining an NHS workforce. Each full-time GP now has 227 more patients than they did a decade ago, while the number of nurses has stagnated. Scottish Labour would ensure that our NHS had a 10-year workforce plan, but we would also focus on boosting existing healthcare staff morale. If you’re missing out on Christmas dinner to care for patients, the least you might expect in return would be changing facilities, hot meals and some time for learning and development.

Third, we would tackle the kind of dysfunction all too evident to hard-working NHS staff. Why, for example, have health board referrals dropped to the Golden Jubilee – our National Waiting Times Centre - when nearly one in six Scots are on an NHS waiting list? Scottish Labour would streamline health boards and empower clinicians who can see firsthand where the system has broken down.

Those working in politics may never perform heart surgery under pressure or manage a busy ward.

But what we can do is come up with policy and investment worthy of those who do.