Report to the People
20th September 2004
The
Debate Starts in Greenock
While
I’m not about to start handing out cigars, I do welcome the Health
Minister’s positive response to my call for any final decisions on Health
Board redesign plans to be deferred until the advisory group on the future shape
of the NHS has reported.
I
don’t pretend that this will solve all our problems, or somehow magically
makes the challenges facing the health service disappear, but it is a sensible
move. There is no point
commissioning an advisory committee to look at the issue from a national
perspective, while all around it decisions continue to be taken on a
hospital-by-hospital, piecemeal basis.
The
advisory group has to be allowed to get on with its work.
Talking
of which, you may have read that the group’s chairman, Glasgow-born Professor
David Kerr, now of Oxford University, is to make Greenock his first port of call
when he hits the road to find out what the people of Scotland want to see in the
21st Century NHS.
I
welcome his particular interest in Inverclyde, together with his public comments
about contemplating changes
for the IRH which would keep it open in a way which would satisfy public
demands.
With the old board-by-board approach now discredited, it’s time to get on with the proper national debate which the professionals, the public and the politicians are demanding. And where better for that debate to start than here?
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