Thursday 21 January 2010

NHS Scotland

According to this report NHS England is more efficient than the rest of the UK. What exactly is wrong with Scotland spending more per head on health care? Why is it bad to have more nurses and doctors and to keep people out of hospitals? A few years ago I studied for a management qualification and one of the points they tried to put over was that it was better to be effective than to be efficient in a business sense.
What surprises me is that even with these supposed extra resources we are still running short staffed, so what are English hospitals like?
A point I would also like to make is that these figures are now 3 years old and very out of date. They were gathered from a time when we had a labour government up here, now we have an SNP government things have improved and waiting times are nowhere as long as have been indicated. And being Scotland, we gather information differently from England so comparisons are not quite as straight forward.

Hope everyone had a good Christmas and New Year and is keeping well.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think one of the things which may not be taken into account is the difference in the geography of the different countries. In our previous house in West Wales the GPs covered a huge rural area, and a visit to the nearest general hospital was a round trip of 30 miles. In Scotland of course there are the difficulties of lochs and islands to cope with too.
PS Happy New Year :)

laproscopic surgeon from the south said...

i went to scotland once. i drove and drove and eventually ended up in Arbroth. i kid you not, the only place that was open was a chinease takeaway and they served me a hamburger..........deep fried in batter. i still feel billious at the thought. Scots people should go back to eating oats and mackeral and running up and down glens in their kilts. Fancy opening a bariatric unit with me Grumpy? we would make a lot of money

Grumpy Old Ken said...

Interesting as always.

GAB said...

Thats about all I am doing right now is keeping well. Last time I had a migraine I was kept waiting 5 hrs in the ER. I was so pissed (as well as uncomfortable and sick) that I have been trying every home remedy to stay well so far so good fingers XXXXed

Julie said...

This report is a pile of pants, frankly. It's highly interpretive; for example, Scotland has higher numbers of medical staff than England. Therefore, there is a lower ratio of patient appointments per doctor/nurse. Therefore, the report concludes, Scottish medical staff have lower productivity levels than English staff. It's full of rubbish like this; I intend to blog on it soon, once I've waded my way to the very end of the report.

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