KEVIN McKenna rightly draws our attention to the impending crisis in the NHS – one that affects us all ("Scottish NHS is facing a crisis – and one that affects us all", The Herald, September 22). However, I must take issue with him when he states that the failure to recall women for cancer screening was “symptomatic of a service bloated with an army of under-achieving and overpaid chief executives, whose default position in dealing with the cabinet secretary for health is to assemble numbers in a palatable form for them and thus live to put an extra year of earnings into their pension pots”.
While this might read well, it fails to recognise that:
1. There has been no appetite from any of the parties represented at Holyrood to pursue strategic reform of the Scottish NHS, and consequently there are more than 20 individual NHS boards…. with chief executive vacancies in a number of them.
2. When chief executives “assemble numbers”, they are only doing so in accordance with the requirements laid down by the Scottish Government and approved by parliamentary process.
If Mr McKenna is seriously interested in achieving “the significant change required to respond to the huge challenges”, then there are a number of parties who have a role to play; our politicians, we the public who elect them, and very particularly, journalists like Mr McKenna who have the power of the written and spoken word to create a climate for change.
Many chief executives of territorial boards have led prolonged and bruising consultations to reform and improve services, and yet they have been stymied before they can be implemented.
The reform of acute services in Greater Glasgow was initiated in 1999, followed by three years of testing consultation before being approved by the Scottish Parliament in 2002; and even then there were claims that further consultation was required. That 2002 programme was only fully delivered in 2015.
Significant change will only be achieved with the active engagement of the public, led by politicians balancing short considerations alongside long-term sustainability. The press hasa key role to play which will require it to move beyond easy newspaper headlines.
Andrew Robertson (former chairman of Greater Glasgow and Clyde NHS Board),
Burnside Cottage, Main Street, Drymen.
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