SCOTLAND’S new Health Secretary has said she wants to increase the speed at which health and social care services are being brought together.
Jeane Freeman insisted efforts to make the two services work more closely are going in “absolutely the right direction”, but she added more focus is needed to provide visible improvements.
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Speaking about the reform process, she said: “It is, in terms of its pace, just finding its feet, relatively new, bringing together health and social care. I now want to increase the focus on that and up the pace on it so we move a wee bit faster to begin to deliver the intent in a way that is more visible to people.”
Freeman, who was given the health brief by Nicola Sturgeon in a reshuffle just over a week ago, said she was “delighted” at her new position – a move which saw her promoted from social security minister to part of the Scottish Cabinet. Her predecessor Shona Robison left the post after coming under fire over the Government’s failure to meet a series of waiting-times targets.
Freeman accepted there is an “immediate challenge in terms of waiting times”, resulting in a “backlog” in the NHS. “We need to deal with the backlog, but we also need to have a sustainable way of delivering on waiting times that sees us into the future,” she said.
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But medical leaders have warned the current NHS model may not be sustainable, with a survey by the British Medical Association in Scotland showing just 3% of doctors think the NHS is adequately resourced, while only 6% feel it is sufficiently staffed.
Peter Bennie, outgoing chair of BMA Scotland, has called on Holyrood ministers to “ensure we have an NHS that we can celebrate for many birthdays to come”.
When asked if the NHS would survive until its 100th anniversary, Freeman said: “I certainly intend to work to ensure that that is the case.”
But she also warned that Brexit poses a “significant risk to the quality of our health service and our ability to continue to provide quality, compassionate care”.
Freeman made clear her opposition to private-sector involvement – saying while it is legitimate for private firms working in the NHS to seek to make a profit, she could “not see how that circle can be squared” with a system which provides free care at the point of delivery.
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