Red tape and bureaucracy in the NHS is hampering attempts to drive down record waiting lists in Scotland, a former Government Minister has said.
Writing in The Herald, Ivan McKee said that a lack of communication and cohesion between the country’s 14 health boards has led to a “resistance” to innovation.
Mr McKee also believes that Scotland's vibrant tech sector is being ignored, with more new processes exported than adopted at home.
There are currently more than 700,000 people on NHS waiting lists across Scotland, the highest total ever.
The former business minister said that advances in technology such as AI and robotic surgery could vastly improve productivity.
Read the full article from Ivan McKee: Our NHS could be doing so much better
He said: “Scotland benefits from a vibrant life sciences sector – with new technology being developed by innovative Scottish start-ups and spin-out businesses from our world leading University sector.
“Yet so much of that great Scottish technology finds itself being exported only rather than tackling waiting lists at home.
“Scotland’s Health care system has much ‘opportunity for improvement’ in this area. Fourteen different Health Boards all potentially suffering from ‘not invented here’ syndrome, needing to go through their own individual processes before adopting technology that has been already proven to work elsewhere.”
The MSP added: “And resistance to innovation at a more local level too – with little incentive to adopt latest technology or process improvements.”
Mr McKee accused health bosses of ‘pilotitis’ - where innovative projects are trialed but not taken up en masse or rolled out across the country.
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Arguing for a cut in NHS bureaucracy, he said: “What is necessary is an unwavering commitment to the fundamental principles of our NHS, a recognition that more bureaucracy is almost never the answer, a prioritisation of spend on cost effective prevention and front line services, a willingness to innovate at scale and at pace to make the best use of Scotland’s technological and research excellence to benefit patients and a need to overcome inertia when it comes to getting different parts of the complex health and social care system to align and work together.
“This can be done, but might require us to think differently about how we do it.”
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