This item was published during the term of a previous administration that ended in April 2007
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£20 million to tackle NHS waiting times
07/02/2002
A national and local attack on waiting times and delays
in the NHS was launched today - backed by £20 million of
extra investment.
The new investment - the latest to be announced from the
£86 million allocated to health from pre-Budget
consequentials - includes:
- an extra £15 million for local NHS Boards to make
progress towards our 2003 target of reducing the maximum
waiting time for an operation to 9 months, and help meet
traditional NHS cost pressures around staffing and
drugs;
- and a national £5 million 'flexible fund' to support
the work of the National Waiting Times Unit in clearing
bottlenecks in both in-patient and outpatient waiting, and
utilising spare capacity in the NHS, private and voluntary
sector.
Health Minister Malcolm Chisholm said he wanted the NHS
to 'match a single-minded determination to tackle waiting
with an innovative and flexible approach to delivering
improvements.'
The £5 million to be held under the direction of the
National Waiting Times Unit and invested from April will be
targeted to:
- reducing waits for angiography and revascularisation
operations like angioplasty to 12 weeks and 24 weeks
respectively by making best use of spare NHS and private
sector capacity, in line with Scottish Health Plan
targets;
- working with the Scottish Cancer Group to help ensure
that the maximum improvements in cancer waiting times are
delivered from the £40 million national cancer investment
plan;
- reducing the excessive waiting times for
tonsillectomies that have built up while concerns over
patient health and safety and issues around medical
instruments and potential contamination are resolved;
- and encouraging the effective use by NHS Boards of all
spare NHS capacity, for example by tackling bottlenecks in
out-patient waiting times through more targeted employment
of nurses and other health professionals in tasks like
endoscopy that have previously been done by doctors.
As a result of today's £15 million boost for local NHS
Boards, there will be an average increase in funding of 7.2
per cent for NHSScotland in 2002-3.
Mr Chisholm said:
"No single issue is a greater priority for me as Health
Minister than stepping up our drive to reduce the time
patients are waiting for tests, diagnosis and treatment in
the NHS. Today, I am announcing a £20 million package of
investment and reform to drive forward our work in this
vital area.
"These resources reflect our overall approach to
improving the NHS - more investment to support frontline
NHS professionals backed by national investment and
national intervention where extra help is needed or
warranted.
"An extra £15 million is being given to NHS Boards on
top of the allocation of resources they were expecting to
meet pressures on NHS budgets. As a result, there will be
an average increase of 7.2 per cent for the NHS in Scotland
next year. We expect this record increase to allow every
NHS Board to make significant progress this year towards
our 2003 target of reducing the maximum waiting time for
in-patient treatment to 9 months from the present maximum
of one year.
"In addition to this significant boost in funding for
frontline NHS staff, I am also announcing a further £5
million to be used centrally by the new National Waiting
Times Unit. This money will be used by the Unit to
intervene in priority areas like cancer and heart disease -
and in areas where there are particularly long waits.
"Already, the Unit has identified the increasing waits
for routine tonsillectomies as an area for action. They
have already indicated to me that part of next year's £5
million 'flexible fund' will be dedicated to stepping up
the number of these operations as soon as the issues around
single-use instruments and possible cross-contamination
with re-usable instruments are resolved.
"The Unit will also be looking to step in - at the
request of NHS Trusts and where they identify problems that
are not being addressed - to tackle the bottlenecks in the
NHS that so frustrate staff and patients. Often this is
down to a local staff shortage, absence, illness, or lack
of training.
"In particular the Unit will be working with the NHS to
redesign how services can be delivered more effectively.
For example, by looking hard at targeting more resources to
train more Scottish nurses in endoscopy - an area in which
nurses are increasingly playing a major role in reducing
outpatient waiting times. These procedures have
traditionally been the preserve of the medical profession -
but nurses are now freeing up doctors' time to deal with
more serious clinical procedures.
"These are innovative and practical proposals that
clearly display the broad approach I am encouraging the
Unit to take. It is not, as some have implied, simply about
buying up private sector beds. The Unit is looking to
utilise spare capacity wherever it can be found - and
private hospitals are indeed one route. The Unit has
already done much detailed work in identifying spare
capacity in the private health sector that the NHS might
use. However, it is clear that this will remain at the
margins of overall NHS activity.
"This extra investment - at both a national and local
level - will allow the NHS to step up its drive to cut
waiting times. I want to see the NHS use those resources
and match a single-minded determination to tackle waiting,
with an innovative and flexible approach to delivering real
improvements on the ground."
Last month, the First Minister announced that £20
million of pre-Budget consequentials would be set aside to
support an Action Plan on Delayed Discharge (to be
announced later this month). Today's £20 million for
waiting is the second announcement from the £86 million of
extra resources set aside for health from the Chancellor's
pre-Budget consequentials. Further details on the remaining
unallocated resources will be announced in due course.