NHS Dumfries & Galloway is under pressure and the SNP is to blame
Many of the problems facing Scotland’s health and social care systems pre-date covid, and the Scottish Government has major questions to answer.
On December second NHS Dumfries and Galloway appealed to patient families to "facilitate speedy discharge" due to the enormous pressures facing the health and social care system. However whilst it is abundantly clear that NHS Dumfries & Galloway is tackling greatest health pressures in living memory, the issues surrounding resource funding predate covid.
According to the Dumfries & Galloway annual audit report 2018/19, the NHS was facing issues surrounding resource funding which was necessitating a program of “efficiency savings”.
“The Financial Plan – 2019/20 to 2021/22 which was presented to NHS Dumfries and Galloway Board on the 8 April 2019, sets the context of rising cost pressures which are not offset through increased resources funding. To achieve financial balance, Management has identified the need to deliver significant efficiency savings over the next three years. By 2021/22, £31.324 million of savings will need to be delivered on a recurring basis. While we recognise the progress made by NHS Dumfries and Galloway in identifying savings to date, over the medium to long term more fundamental changes are likely to be required to continue to meet the forecast financial challenges.”
What that all means is NHS Dumfries & Galloway - before the pandemic negatively impacted on budgets, resources and staffing - already faced a gap between rising costs of providing healthcare and the financial resources being made available to it. Thus, a need to deliver “significant efficiency savings” over the following three years.
Obviously the arrival of the pandemic put a spanner in those “efficiency” plans. But it should be emphasised that even prior to the pandemic the excellent staff working at all levels of NHS Dumfries & Galloways were already facing a need for “fundamental changes” due to resource funding falling short of rising costs.
The audit (published in March 2019) goes on to note that “to date £10.534 million of savings have been identified”, and that “£5.834 million will be achieved through recurring savings”, plus “£4.700 million through nonrecurring savings”. It is that last point, the ‘nonrecurring savings’ which caught my eye. Specifically where it says
“£1.000 million on Non recurring staff savings”
This becomes quite interesting to note since NHS Dumfries & Galloway has this year made “direct requests” to families of hospital in-patients to “provide whatever support they can to facilitate a speedy discharge, and help address major pressures”.
The reason given for this unprecedented appeal according to Chief operating Officer, Julie White is “staffing pressures are a fundamental aspect of the current pressures right across our system”
So just prior to the pandemic’s arrival NHS Dumfries & Galloway was being forced into a major savings and efficiencies program which involved making “non recurring staff savings”. Then, under unprecedented pressures due to the pandemic, is now in a state of crisis due to staffing pressures.
According to Ms White,
“Recruitment challenges are limiting our ability to meet this increased need.”
Might the efficiencies forced onto NHS Dumfries & Galloway due to lack of resource funding to meet rising cost pressures have worsened the impact the pandemic has had on it?
Moving outward, what we do know is that poor workforce planning by the SNP led Scottish Government has led to huge NHS Scotland problems across the board. The Scottish Government has actually been reduced to begging students (yes, you read that correctly) to plug NHS staff shortages.
According to The Courier
“The Scottish Government wrote to universities at Aberdeen, Dundee, Glasgow and Edinburgh, asking if medical students could work as porters and auxiliary staff.
The fourth and fifth year undergraduates would be paid a wage, the government confirmed.”
Student porters. Nurse shortages. And hospitals - prior to the pandemic - being compelled to make “efficiency savings”. Is it any wonder the Scottish NHS is facing such pressures? And there really is only one organisation to blame, the Scottish Government.
In the specific case of NHS Dumfries & Galloway as far back as 2019 it was clear that “NHS Dumfries and Galloway face significant financial challenges over the short to medium term.”
Back then, before the pandemic would make the situation many times worse, “The current revenue plan identifies a financial gap of £17.3 million in year”. £17.3m gap.
But remarkably, according to the report, NHS Dumfries & Galloway’s management recognised that the efficiencies achieved via those nonrecurring savings would create future pressures for the hospitals to face:
“While we recognise that breakeven has been achieve in recent years this has been done so through reliance on non-recurring savings, which increases the pressure in future years alongside increase service, demand and cost pressures, making financial targets increasingly difficult to achieve”
My purpose writing all of this is not to blame hospital management, staff or auditors. Instead, it is vital to highlight the scale of the mismanagement NHS Scotland has had to suffer due to the SNP government.
Scotland-wide nursing and NHS staff shortages is the SNP’s fault. NHS Dumfries & Galloway not having enough resources to even meet the non-pandemic future demands is the SNP’s fault. The need for the ‘nonrecurring staff savings’ and general efficiency savings are all the SNP’s fault.
Don’t let Nicola Sturgeon fool you. She has not demonstrated competence in office. These healthcare problems have been made worse by the pandemic, but they all predated it. And there really is only one woman to blame, Nicola Sturgeon.
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