HEALTH Secretary Shona Robison has expressed a desire to remove some of the political "argy-bargy" out of the running of the NHS.
She told a major conference in Edinburgh that she hoped to reach a cross-party consensus about the way forward for health and social care services.
Her comments follow remarks by Dr Peter Bennie, chair of the Scottish Council of the British Medical Association, about "the weekly accusations flung across the parliament chamber as each party seeks to blame the other for the problems in the NHS".
Professor Frank Dunn, president of the Royal College of the Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, has also called for Scotland to lead the way by removing politics from the management of the health service - saying in the run up to every election services faced a "planning blight".
Ms Robison was addressing the Citizen Wellbeing Assembly at Murrayfield which was organised by the Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland.
She reflected on the recurrence of some political arguments and the need to focus more on areas such as community care, later adding: "Perhaps we can remove some of the argy-bargy out of it".
She went on to say she wanted to try to reach a consensus around the direction of travel for the NHS and social care going forward to 2030 and beyond.
The Scottish Government already has a document called the 2020 Vision which has cross-party support and which broadly envisages the way services should change.
Officials are currently preparing to travel around Scotland talking about what healthcare should look like, and how services should be staffed, further down the line.
Ms Robison stressed that these discussions with the public about the future of the NHS would not be "all softly, softly." "It is about choices and priorities and that is sometimes difficult," she said.
After the speech she said she was "optimistic" a cross-party consensus could be agreed around the long term future of the NHS so that "no matter who is in power, that is the direction of travel."
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