Questions have been raised over whether NHS Highland acted too quickly in stopping injections and interventional treatments for new chronic pain patients.
Highlands and Islands Labour MSP Rhoda Grant raised the issue following a further meeting with the Minister for Public Health Jenni Minto on 22 January 2026.
Since 2022, new patients referred to NHS Highland’s Chronic Pain service have not been offered injections or other interventional treatments and have instead been encouraged to adopt a therapy based approach focused on managing pain and “living well with pain”.
During a previous meeting in June last year involving the Minister and NHS Highland, it was acknowledged that both intervention and therapy can play a role in the management of chronic pain.
Following that meeting, Grant contacted NHS Highland directly and was told the decision to stop offering interventions to new patients had been taken in 2021 or 2022.
NHS Highland stated:
“Given the accumulating evidence that these procedures do not help patients reduce their pain in the long term, improve function or reduce medication, and the impending national review, it was agreed to no longer offer these to new patients.
“However, ethically, the team felt that it wasn’t appropriate to remove access to anaesthetic interventions for the existing patients who derived benefit from them.”
Grant said the timing of that decision raised serious concerns.
“That national review is only being carried out now, some four years after NHS Highland made the decision to stop offering interventions to new patients.
“They acknowledge that existing patients benefit from these interventions so it surely stands to reason that new patients with similar conditions would benefit too had they been offered them.
“I know from constituents the hope they place on being referred to the Chronic Pain team as they’ve been through the primary care services with no resolution.
“To have that hope dashed at the first meeting is devastating for people whose entire lives are being blighted by living with pain.”
Grant also questioned the effectiveness of the current approach.
“NHS Highland’s new approach to support people to “live well with pain” is of little help to the people who are living with the pain and feeling its effects, not just physically but mentally too.
“The Minister asked me why NHS Highland is not allaying the fears of existing patients of the service who now fear their injections will be stopped too.
“I can only ask that question too and I will continue to do that in a bid to offer new and existing pain patients the treatment they need to get them out of pain, and back to living fulfilling lives.”
