A NEW blueprint for the future of the NHS, including the beds and staff it will need to cater for an ageing population, has been promised by the Scottish Government.

Health Secretary Shona Robison has admitted to the Scottish Parliament that not enough has been done to look after the elderly better in the community and vowed to produce a plan which shows the changes and workforce required to make it happen.

For 18 months The Herald's NHS: Time for Action campaign has been highlighting the pressures on the NHS and social care and calling for a review to show the capacity needed in both sectors to look after the growing number of frail people.

Ms Robison said she still believed in the 2020 Vision, the document which outlines the Scottish Government's strategy to prevent people needing hospital treatment by caring better for them at home.

However, she told Holyrood: "What is clear to me is that as a nation we are not making sufficient progress quickly enough towards it and we need to be clear on how we are going to deliver that vision and the step changes that are required to get us there.

"I also believe we need to raise our eyes beyond that horizon and look at what success would like over a 10 or 15-year time frame."

She went on to say this future NHS "will have to be different from the service we have provided in the last 10 years."

Ms Robison added: "I want to announce my intention to develop a longer term 10 to 15-year plan for the NHS. This will include planning what capacity is required where and what the workforce is needed to look like to deliver the services."

In an exclusive interview with The Herald, Ms Robison later said the plan would be used to inform the number and type of staff trained to work in the NHS and the number of intermediate care beds which could be used to provide a half-way house between home and hospital.

Asked if more money would be required to make it happen, she said that tackling the number of patients delayed in hospital waiting for care to be organised in the community would save at least £150m.

She accepted that sometimes parallel services need to be set up before savings can be made elsewhere in the health or care systems - but she also suggested some hospital services could be closed if they were no longer necessary.

Talking about expanding intermediate care beds, Ms Robison said: "That has a knock-on effect because it might mean further down the line you might not need something, somewhere else."

Pressed on whether the SNP was still maintaining the presumption against the centralisation of hospital services which was introduced when they entered government in 2007, Ms Robison said: "We have never said that services should not change."

She later said she had a presumption in favour of decentralisation - taking services out of hospitals and putting them into the community.

The Scottish Government is in the early stages of producing a new clinical strategy examining the configuration of the health services at all levels.

Ms Robison's announcement was welcomed by the British Medical Association Scotland and the Royal College of Nursing Scotland.

Jill Vickerman, Scottish Secretary of the BMA, said: "We are all in agreement that our NHS is under extreme pressure and cannot survive indefinitely based on the goodwill and self-sacrifice of health professionals, and this has been described regularly in the national press over recent months, including the recent consistent narrative set out in The Herald.

"The BMA is therefore very pleased to hear the Cabinet Secretary for Health acknowledging the need for significant change in the way that services are delivered by the NHS in Scotland in order for it to be sustainable in 2020 and beyond."

Theresa Fyffe, RCN Scotland Director, said: "We have consistently called for a review of the whole of the health and social care system, as have the other Royal Colleges and the Herald in its 'Time for Action' campaign.

"Fundamental change is needed, not just tinkering with the workforce, if the NHS is to be sustainable in the long term. So it is encouraging to hear the Cabinet Secretary committing to take a long term view. But the devil will be in the detail."

The Health Secretary, who has been in post for three months, acknowledged the work her predecessor Alex Neil had done but said sometimes coming in fresh "you see the missing bits."

She added: "I have been listening to a lot of people and lot of organisations and a lot of campaigns over the last three months. All of it has got me to the point where I think this is the right thing to do."