Headlining early today for the Labour Party on Reporting Scotland, we see a Fife Labour councillor condemn one wee GP surgery building, specially chosen for their campaign.
On the BBC Scotland website and, no doubt, on longer broadcasts, we read:
Independent experts warned it was unlikely NHS Scotland would “survive” without extra funding this year.
Basic journalism standards require that both the independent experts and the word ‘survive’ will re-appear in the full text below. Neither do.
The only comments are from Donald Campbell, chairman of the Kincardine community council and from Dr Iain Kennedy, chair of BMA Scotland.
The word ‘survive’ only appears once. Who said it? We need to know.
Kennedy has previous, lots of it.
From December 2023:
Dr Iain Kennedy, chair of BMA Scotland
Enthusiastic Unionist and admirer of Sandesh Gulhane MP (Con) returns with another dodgy survey as part of a wider attempt to undermine the SNP.
The facts, not mentioned:
First, staffing:
NHS Scotland has 181 000 staff, 1 for every 30 members of the population of 5.44 million.
NHS England has 1.4 million staff, 1 for every 40 members of the population of 56 million.
NHS Wales has 90 000 million staff, 1 for every 35 members of the population of 3.14 million.
Sources:
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Almost without exception, across Scotland, there are far more GPs per head of population and especially so in BMA Scotland’s ‘crisis-ridden’ rural parts. Look at rural Wales:
Second, waiting times:
Reading today Sunak ‘highly unlikely’ to meet promise to cut NHS waiting lists, warn health leaders and predictions that England’s waiting list will soar to 8 million next year, from the 7.6 million in the above graphs, I had a wee look around and found that in an August 2023 Guardian article I’d missed and ‘our’ media had ignored.
In that report we see also:
“There are many differences across the devolved nations which might be relevant here, notably an older population in Scotland and Wales with more deprivation; higher nurse staffing and higher spending in both Scotland and Wales; and more doctors in Scotland,” they [Nuffield Trust] said.
So, against the odds, with an older more deprived population, NHS Scotland still performs best.
Finally, for when Jackie Baillie accuses the Scottish Government of not spending as much on the NHS, this:
Health expenditure in the United Kingdom in 2021/22 (of which NHS spend is the lion’s share) was highest in Scotland at £3,490 per person and lowest in England at £3,192 per capita.
And, remember this:
NHS bosses are using misleading figures to hide dangerously poor performance by A&E units in England against the four-hour treatment target, emergency department doctors claim.
Some A&Es treat and admit, transfer or discharge as few as one in three patients within four hours, although the NHS constitution says they should deal with 95% of arrivals within that timeframe. How well or poorly A&Es are doing in meeting the 95% target is not in the public domain because the data that NHS England publishes is for NHS trusts overall, not individual hospitals.
That means official figures are an aggregate of performance at sometimes two A&Es run by the same trust or include data for any walk-in centres, minor injuries units or urgent treatment centres that a trust also operates. Forty-eight trusts have two A&Es and many also run at least one of the latter.https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/oct/28/misleading-ae-figures-in-england-hiding-poor-performance
So, just how much faster are Scotland’s full A&E departments, then? Might that 13.8% be 30% or 50%? It’d take more IQ and time than I have to answer that but, once more, NHS England, saturated in dishonest managerialism, is revealed to be cheating.
Talking-up Scotland / Facts on NHS, Crime, ferries and everything else you can think of 
Scotland spends £13Billion on SNHS + social care. From the underfunded Block Grant.
Westminster spends £125Billion on the NHS. From 2015 funding was cut and not increased. The Tories are spending £1090Billion.
Labour have made another VOW which will be reneged upon after election day.
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The ‘survive’ comment was abstracted from an earlier HMS James Cook piece on 6th February “Scottish budget plan ‘misleading’, says IFS think tank”, attributed to “associate director David Phillips – There is a link to it embedded in Andrew Picken’s article.
It is quite a piece of political mischief https://archive.ph/x0tVn, clearly the objective is to portray what is normal at this time of year as something unusual – Who in their right mind would consider letting a new contract until they knew their position for the next financial year ?
Given the inflationary effects on existing contracts, reviewing estimates before the next tranche go out to tender is a massively complex but essential exercise…. Unless you work for BBC Scotland of course….
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