Report to the People
13th October 2003
The Truth Will Out
The
maternity review has certainly thrust the challenge of how the NHS is organised
and run into the spotlight – albeit in the role of reluctant star.
When,
back in April 2000, I first condemned in the Scottish Parliament the adverse
effects of artificial health board boundaries, I was met with much tutting and
head-shaking. When I began
explaining what going for short-term fixes in the NHS would do to patient care,
there were those who didn’t take my predictions seriously.
Indeed,
only last month, I provoked a furious reaction from some quarters when I argued
in Parliament that, if we really want to tackle the issues facing NHS, we need
to look at its underlying structural problems as opposed to just telling people
to eat a few more apples.
But
the truth, as they say, will out.
As
UNISON’s Jim Devine rightly pointed out in the Telegraph last week, the future of maternity services is not only in
doubt in Greenock, or even Argyll and Clyde. Services in Stirling, Falkirk, Fife and Glasgow are facing
similar reviews. Indeed,
I have had letters from campaigners as far away as Perth.
With
so much of the country facing situations which have been brought on by the
pressures of, for example, the agreement on junior doctors hours and the way
clinicians are trained, it is blatantly obvious that those managing our health
services must work together to address
them.
That
means resisting the temptation to look no further than their own front door –
and that means initiating a wider strategic review.
We
would be failing patients if we left individual health boards sitting behind
their artificial boundaries – their own Berlin Walls – working in isolation
and pretending those on the other side don’t exist.
It
does, of course, give me some satisfaction to see our views being supported by
both the trade unions and many professionals.
But this doesn’t mean to say we’ve won the argument.
At a series of meetings last week, therefore, I kept up the pressure on
Health Minister, Malcolm Chisholm, urging him not to allow the serious and
immediate staffing issues which face the Rankin to dictate how NHS services in
the West of Scotland are organised.
I
suspect he knows this makes sense. But
I also know that he is under massive pressure from powerful interests within the
NHS to adopt the Health Board’s plans.
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