Meeting of the Parliament 18 February 2015
No—I want to make progress.
That is a high bar. I will be interested to hear from the cabinet secretary how that will be achieved and what her ambitions are. To have the most transparent health service in the world will not simply be a matter of publishing A and E waiting times. Patients will—rightly—have a higher expectation of the information and of their health service.
What is the patient’s whole journey time to be from lifting the phone to make an appointment with their GP to discharge from hospital? Will the Scottish Government begin to measure and improve that? On each stage of that journey, there are expectations, and sometimes there are delays, stresses and surprises. Can the process be managed better? Will the Government be open about each stage, how long it should take and what patients’ expectations will be? Will the duplicity of social unavailability hidden in waiting times end?