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Introduction
Access to healthcare should be as local as possible, for everybody in Scotland, regardless of where they live. However, whilst the healthcare needs of rural and urban communities might be very similar, there are substantial differences in the way that such care can be delivered. In remote and rural areas patients may have to travel long distances to reach the services they need and recruiting the right kind of health professionals can be more difficult than in our major towns and cities. Of course, there are also huge differences between remote and rural communities themselves with life on Scotland's islands providing the NHS with different challenges to those in some rural parts of the mainland.
The Scottish Government asked a project team to consider ways of designing and maintaining services that can meet the needs of remote and rural communities. The group listened to views from people living in these communities and to the views of staff working in both the NHS and other organisations that provide care.
The project group has produced a series of proposals designed to provide good access to healthcare services and ensure that such services can continue to be delivered in the future. Their proposals rely on sharing skills and expertise across communities and on improving the links between different types of healthcare. In particular, they recommend that Community and Rural General hospitals should work closer with specialists in larger centres and that greater use should be made of new technologies that help practitioners to share their knowledge.
NHSScotland is now working to implement the proposals of the project team. The following sections take a look at what these changes are likely to mean to you.
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