Report to the People
20th December 2004
Pioneering
Surgery
It’s
an irony that, while medicine and health technology continue to be at the
cutting edge of innovation, health care systems seem stuck in the past.
Mobile
technology has come on leaps and bounds in recent years, but we are still
expected to travel to medical services, rather than the services coming to us.
In
the supermarket, my loyalty card can tell the store my whole shopping history.
But, when I go to a hospital, I still see staff pushing shopping trolleys
full of medical records around the corridors.
Last
week, therefore, Health Minister Andy Kerr set out a raft of bold reforms,
designed to give us access to the treatment we need quickly and conveniently.
These
include making use of all the available space at the Golden Jubilee National
Hospital in Clydebank and having specialised care and treatment centres to
concentrate on a few key operations.
Particularly
welcome for us, mobile diagnostic units are to be provided in communities. Early
diagnosis of the common killer diseases can add years and quality to your life.
So getting these units into areas where people are dying too early
(average male life expectancy in parts of Greenock is 65, compared to 80 in
Kilmacolm) will help us close the health gap.
The
Minister’s open-mindedness is a breath of fresh air. We can’t run the Health Service if we are scared to try
fresh new ideas. If the pioneers of
medicine had thought like that, they’d still be applying leeches.
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