Report to the People
22nd May 2006
One
Size Doesn’t Fit All
If you had two shops, one of
which was queued out the door while the other was just ticking over, would you
put the same number of staff in both? Of
course not. So why does the NHS
have the same number of doctors looking after the healthiest people as looking
after the sickest?
It doesn’t make sense.
And it results in the poorest and sickest people having the least chance
of seeing a doctor. They are also
more likely to see an inexperienced, overburdened doctor; less likely to see a
consultant; and more likely to die younger.
To counter this, Professor
David Kerr’s report on the future shape of the NHS, to which many of you
contributed, argues that services should be designed to suit need.
And, when MSPs debated the progress being made in implementing his report
on Thursday, I made the point that this “one-size-fits-all” approach has
seen the gap between rich and poor growing rather than shrinking.
I also put this to
Scotland’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr Harry Burns, when he appeared before the
Health Committee. To his credit, Dr
Burns made it clear that, “if we are to tackle the increased prevalence of
disease in deprived communities, we must match that increased prevalence with an
increased number of GPs.”
That, however, means taking
some bold funding decisions - putting an end to ploughing money into making the
healthiest healthier, while people in Greenock and elsewhere are still dying in
their 50s and 60s.
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