QUESTIONS are being asked about billions being spent by Scotland’s 31 Integration Authorities on plans to merge health and social care.
In a report published today, Holyrood’s health and sport committee say there is an “unacceptable” lack of information on how money is being spent.
Committee convener Neil Findlay said there were concerns that increasing bureaucracy would lead to the different different agencies working on the proposal blaming “each other for the lack of progress with integration”.
Findlay said: “There’s a distinct lack of data to identify and evaluate outcomes, including spending and savings. This would be unacceptable for any public money let alone over £8 billion. It needs rectifying immediately and a mechanism for facilitating scrutiny of performance, spend and savings put in place.”
The committee’s report said that while IAs had an overall budget of £8.29 billion there was “no breakdown of this figure to individual integration authority level” which made scrutiny of budgets “very challenging”.
MSPs also expressed concern over the “lack of assessment of the outcomes”.
“We are very concerned IAs are taking allocation and investment decisions without assessing, or even possessing the ability to assess the relationship between and effectiveness of spending on outcomes,” the report said.
The committee called on the Government to provide the organisations with “clear parameters” so that spending can be measured against specific outcomes.
The MSPs said: “The complete lack of benchmarking or assessment of performance across IA must be addressed. Only in this way can efficiencies and best practices be identified.”
The report added: “The Scottish Government must have confidence its priorities are being met. There is currently very little data on the overall performance of IAs or information on how they are allocating their money.
“The inability of the Scottish Government to evaluate IAs’ performance against its own priorities cannot be desirable”.
A Scottish Government spokesman said: “Integration is one of the most ambitious programmes of work this Government has ever undertaken.
“It is already delivering health and social care services that are working more efficiently, putting people at the very heart of treatment decisions.
“This year’s Audit Scotland report noted that Integration Authorities were beginning to have a positive impact, particularly with national improvement in delayed discharge.
He added: “We will continue to monitor the budgets and effectiveness of IAs to ensure they deliver on agreed outcomes.”.
Why are you making commenting on The National only available to subscribers?
We know there are thousands of National readers who want to debate, argue and go back and forth in the comments section of our stories. We’ve got the most informed readers in Scotland, asking each other the big questions about the future of our country.
Unfortunately, though, these important debates are being spoiled by a vocal minority of trolls who aren’t really interested in the issues, try to derail the conversations, register under fake names, and post vile abuse.
So that’s why we’ve decided to make the ability to comment only available to our paying subscribers. That way, all the trolls who post abuse on our website will have to pay if they want to join the debate – and risk a permanent ban from the account that they subscribe with.
The conversation will go back to what it should be about – people who care passionately about the issues, but disagree constructively on what we should do about them. Let’s get that debate started!
Callum Baird, Editor of The National
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel