Highland patients could find healthcare decisions being made even further from the communities they affect under plans to replace Scotland’s 14 territorial health boards with two strategic bodies, Andrew Baxter has warned.
The Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch MSP says the abolition of NHS Highland would risk creating another layer of centralisation across a region where distance and geography already present significant challenges for patients.
First Minister John Swinney announced the major restructuring of NHS Scotland as part of his Programme for Government on Tuesday.
The Scottish Government says replacing the existing territorial health boards will reduce duplication and release more resources and capacity for frontline treatment.
Baxter argues that the consequences could look very different from communities across the Highlands, particularly in areas such as Skye where patients already travel considerable distances to access some services.
He also questioned the apparent contrast between plans to create much larger health boards and the government’s separate commitment to consider substantial reform of local governance.
Baxter said:
“In one breath, John Swinney tells us that some of Scotland’s councils may be too big and that local government needs reformed.
“In the next, he abolishes NHS Highland and creates an enormous health board stretching across a huge part of Scotland.
“Here in Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch, we know better than most that bigger does not always mean better.
“For communities in Skye, bigger can mean more remote, more out of touch and decisions being made further and further away from the people they affect.
“We have seen this push and pull from the Scottish Government time and again, and somehow it always seems to end in the same place: more centralisation.
“People across the Highlands want healthcare that understands the geography and communities it serves.
“They do not want another enormous organisation where decisions about a patient on Skye are taken hundreds of miles away.
“At this rate, it will not be long before decisions about healthcare on Skye are being made from an office in Edinburgh city centre.”
The warning puts the particular geography of the Highlands firmly into the developing debate over the future structure of NHS Scotland.
For communities spread across islands, peninsulas and some of the country’s most remote mainland areas, the argument over how the NHS is organised will inevitably come down to more than the number of organisations on an administrative chart.
The question for Highland patients will be whether the new structure brings decisions and services closer to them, or leaves an already vast region feeling further removed from those making them.
