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Foreword by Minister for Health and Community Care
Good health and wellbeing is important to all of us. It underpins our social and economic prosperity. The delivery of quality healthcare services makes an important contribution to good health and is a key priority for the Scottish Executive.
NHS Scotland employs almost 150,000 staff delivering an array of care across a range of settings. We must ensure that the workforce in NHS Scotland reflects service needs now and in the future and that the right skills are available in the right settings. That means focusing on care delivered locally in GP surgeries, community clinics and patients' homes, where ninety percent of care is provided, as well as care provided in hospitals.
The recently published Building a Health Service Fit for the Future: a National Framework for Service Change in the NHS in Scotland looked to the NHS of the future in Scotland. Our challenge is to work towards that future, redesigning services and developing the workforce to deliver the health improvements and healthcare services that Scotland deserves. My message to NHS Boards across Scotland is clear - patient need should drive the need for the workforce. We have a solid base on which to work. We have the highest ever number of staff working in NHS Scotland and have secured substantial growth in staff numbers and improvements for patients. We are investing in staff and rewarding them fairly for what they do, in line with equal pay legislation, helping us to better recruit and retain staff in NHS Scotland and to provide the tools and levers with which to improve services to patients and achieve beneficial service redesign. Those improvements must continue.
This document provides a framework which allows NHS Scotland to plan workforce numbers for the future, underpinned by the necessary alignment with service and financial planning, education and training, regulatory support and organisational structures.
The Scottish Health Workforce Plan 2004 Baseline was the first document of its kind to be published in Scotland and heralded the beginning of a crucial phase in workforce planning. This report now takes the next steps by providing a strategic overview of the future direction of the workforce forming the basis for staff projections to be produced by each NHS Board and by the three workforce planning regions later in 2005/06. In this way NHS Scotland will be able to plan strategically the workforce for the future.
This is good progress which ensures that an effective planning cycle is in place to forecast the workforce required to deliver our objectives for improved patient care, underpinned by clear and affordable financial plans - an annual cycle that will be refined and developed year-on-year as the evidence-base and expertise grows. This will enable NHS Scotland to secure the workforce it needs to respond to changes in services and to serve patients' needs - a modern workforce for a modern health service.
Andy Kerr
Minister for Health and Community Care
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