From New winter health plan to ease hospital pressures published today:

Expanded Hospital at Home services, a public awareness campaign and targeted investment to reduce waiting lists are all part of a newly-unveiled health preparedness plan for winter.

A collective effort is critical in the months ahead to ease pressures on the NHS, Health Secretary Angela Constance said as she launched the new national winter health plan.

In a statement to the Scottish Parliament, the Health Secretary set out several actions to provide guidance to health and social care systems ahead of winter, including:

• an increased focus on community care, with over 10,000 patients benefiting from an expansion of Hospital at Home service
• a Home First approach to healthcare
• a new public awareness campaign to help people access the right care, in the right place, at the right time which will launch at the end of October
• renewed calls for eligible patients to get vaccinated against seasonal viruses – including flu – which hospitalised almost 6,700 people last winter
• winter-specific planned care funding from the £90 million announced earlier this year to reduce waiting lists for operations and procedures
• further implementation of a new national plan to improve the flow of patients through hospital and free up bed capacity.

NHS England has a winter preparedness framework for 2026/27 that covers much of the same ground as Scotland’s plan announced today, but it is organised differently. It was set earlier, and delivery sits with local systems rather than a single national launch.

A timed national campaign can shift some demand. Scotland’s plan includes a specific end-of-October push on NHS inform and using A&E only for emergencies, alongside vaccination. England relies more on standing NHS 111 routes and local communications. A coordinated message is more likely to land before the flu peak than dozens of local variants.

The main advantage is therefore coordination and accountability, not extra clinical capacity. A funded national package is better at making every board do roughly the same things at the same time, and at stopping winter money disappearing into general deficits.

Source: https://www.gov.scot/news/new-winter-health-plan-to-ease-hospital-pressures/

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