Official Report search · Parliament Workbench

Chamber

Plenary, 25 Apr 2002

25 Apr 2002 · S1 · Plenary

Item of business

Primary Health Care

Chisholm, Malcolm Lab Edinburgh North and Leith Watch on SPTV

Tommy Sheridan has highlighted another part of the primary care reform agenda. Sometimes, people must go through too many stages before they reach the appropriate professional. Physiotherapy is an area in which that happens; optometry is another. Waiting times for treatment for eye conditions has been dealt with by cutting out some of those stages. The general point that Tommy Sheridan makes is absolutely valid.

We also want to take steps to ensure that best practice becomes common practice throughout Scotland. There will be a major drive to encourage collaboration in primary care—for example, by funding more locum covers—so that professionals in one part of the country can share experiences systematically with those in other areas. The need for best practice to become common practice runs through the recent report of the primary care modernisation group, which is aptly entitled "Making the Connections: Developing Best Practice into Common Practice". The report identifies specific priorities for action, including improving access to services, better chronic disease management in the community and improved mental health services in primary care. I support those priorities, which are at the heart of our immediate reform agenda.

I referred to dedicated additional resources of £30 million to primary care teams. LHCCs are currently investing that money in a range of services for patients. I had intended to speak at greater length about our continuing investment but, as time is passing so quickly, I will refer only briefly to the £30 million tranche and to the £48 million for 100 high-quality modern premises projects throughout Scotland, many of which will bring primary care professionals from different agencies together to provide one-stop services. An excellent example of that is at Dalmellington in Ayrshire, which I was pleased to visit recently. We will perhaps hear more about it from someone from Ayrshire later.

There is also £18.5 million being invested in personal medical services to enable GPs and their teams to focus on the clinical needs of their patients through more flexible ways of providing existing and additional services and through the best use of professional skills. Examples include improved chronic disease management, improved mental health services and improved services for specific groups such as homeless people and people who have learning disabilities.

I do not want people to think that all this is just a shake-up of primary care. We are stepping up the pace of change and we are taking those who work in primary care with us. They are already signed up to the agenda and are delivering it throughout Scotland.

Additional investment is not just about providing more of the same, but about doing things differently. It is about ensuring that primary care can drive change and it is about working with front-line staff and with patients to redesign services to provide more comprehensive and better co-ordinated care to individuals and communities.

Service redesign, new technologies, greater flexibilities in the roles and responsibilities of different staff groups, and the stripping out of bureaucracy can all create scope to increase the proportion of time that health professionals spend with patients. Much of the redesign work to date has focused on the interface between primary care and specialist services. For example, in Dumfries and Galloway, a managed clinical coronary heart disease—CHD—network has been developed, which provides care pathways for all health professionals. It identifies what is required at each stage of a patient's care and ensures a uniform approach. That CHD network has been driven by primary care—the project manager is a GP and all the LHCCs in the area have been enthusiastic supporters, as have individual practices. That is a concrete example of what we mean when we talk about redesigning services across primary and secondary care.

Search Hansard contributions

Plenary, 25 Apr 2002

In the same item of business