By Professor John Robertson OBA
From BBC Wales, yesterday:
Some major vascular operations will no longer be going ahead in north Wales, a health board has announced.
Betsi Cadwaladr health board said it was pausing its provision of planned and emergency open abdominal aortic aneurism (AAA) surgery to help improve its other care.
The health board confirmed there had been an “incident”, but said the decision was not based solely on this and other vascular care would continue as normal.
Wow! Dramatic news. The Health Secretary will be challenged?
Nope
Opposition politicians call it a scandal?
Nope, not a word.
How are things with heart ops in Scotland?
Scotland’s waiting list for heart treatment is barely half that per head of NHS England!
The Guardian in May 2024, had this shocking news:
The British Heart Foundation (BHF) warns that heart care waiting lists are now at a record high, reaching 414,596 at the end of March 2024 in England, almost double what it was in 2020.
In February 2024, the British Heart Foundation felt this was shocking for Scotland:
Between March 2019 and September 2023, the number of people waiting for an outpatient appointment rose from 8,562 to 23,027. In the last year alone, the waiting list has grown by more than 5000.
I agree it is shocking but how shocking is it? You can compare figures such as these over time and they are, I agree, shocking, on that basis.
You can also compare them spatially or geographically, just in case there’s a wider trend here, based on, for example, people pleasingly living longer and thus living long enough to get onto waiting lists, and on this basis it’s actually quite good news for NHS Scotland and for the people of Scotland and, perhaps, for the Government of Scotland too.
With 10 times the population, all things being equal, England might have been expected to have around 230 000 waiting for heart treatment, but they actually had nearly 415 000.
Nearly, not quite, TWICE as many! Sounds like a crisis in one of these places.
Sources:
Support Scots Independent, Scotland’s oldest pro-independence newspaper and host of the OBA (Oliver Brown Award) at: https://scotsindependent.scot/FWShop/shop/
The Oliver Brown Award for advancing the cause of Scotland’s self respect, previously awarded to Dr Philippa Whitford, Alex Salmond and Sean Connery: https://scotsindependent.scot/?page_id=116
About Oliver Brown, the first Scottish National Party candidate to save his deposit in a Parliamentary election: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Brown_(Scottish_activis
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
Also from the same BBC Wales news article on vascular operations in north Wales there is this:
‘Complex vascular services were centralised to Ysbyty Glan Clwyd in April 2019, having previously been split between Ysbyty Gwynedd in Bangor and Wrexham Maelor Hospital.
‘The service has been under scrutiny since then and, in 2022, the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) found risks to patients’ safety in several areas, concluding that in some cases, clinicians “were possibly working outside the limits of their competence”.’ (my emphasis)
It’s not hard to imagine reactions from opposition politicians – it’s not hard to imagine amplification of cries of ‘scandal’ and the like laid at the door of the government – if this had happened within NHS Scotland.
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People will have to travel for treatment. Extremely rare.
£22Billion is going into healthcare next year. That should improve matters.
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Wales like Scotland is underfunded by Westminster. Barnett Formula.
Wales voted for Brexit. Lost £Billions in EU support.
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When I share these posts on facebook they are being removed and a warning issued, do you know why?
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