Comments from Scotland's new Health Secretary suggest that plans for NHS reform are more advanced than has been originally stated.

In an interview with BBC Scotland's Sunday Programme, Neil Gray said he intends to discuss a reform paper at a Scottish government cabinet meeting in the coming weeks that will take forward work already done by his predecessor – though the details remain unclear.

The national conversation on the future of the NHS in Scotland, promised by the Deputy First Minister in her budget statement in December, was not mentioned.

In his resignation letter to the First Minister last week, Michael Matheson MSP stated:

“Given the growing demand our health service faces, the NHS requires major reform to ensure that we have a sustainable health service able to deliver the best possible care for patients. I have appreciated your support and encouragement in developing our plans to take these reforms forward. Strong and consistent leadership over the coming year will be necessary to ensure we enhance performance and drive down patients waiting times.”

In his BBC interview, Mr Gray was pressed on what reform might look like:

“I'm expecting to take a paper to cabinet in the coming weeks and months in order to set that out,” he said. “I'm looking to see what the detail of that is going to be, and I've got introductory meetings across our health service next week in order to hear more about what some of what Michael was working on.”

Mr Gray was challenged on how radical he was prepared to be and explained that he will be evidence-led, engaging with stakeholders across government, trade unions and NHS staff:

“I'm willing to be pragmatic. I'm willing to consider the evidence and the advice that is given to me not just by my officials within government, but also staff and trade unions, around what is possible and what is most likely to work. And I will take decisions on that basis.”

Earlier the new health secretary had been asked about the Institute for Fiscal Studies report suggesting that, despite spending more money and employing more staff, the NHS in Scotland ‘has an ongoing productivity problem’ with treatment volumes not matching additional resources.

Mr Gray replied:

“We need to see reform; we need to see improvements. And that includes through improvements in productivity. And that's what I'm going to be looking at in the coming weeks around what more we can do to improve the productivity across our NHS.

“But we have to recognise that we are seeing more people through our NHS; we're seeing greater demands upon all levels of both our NHS and social care sector. We're going to need to reform the way that we work. But I want to make sure that that reform means that we're having an increased capacity.”

He added that, whatever reform might look like, he would ensure NHS remained “public” and “free at the point of need” – admitting that achieving this will be “a challenging proposition”.

 

Read more: Who is Scotland’s new health and care secretary?; Labour proposes move to three NHS boards; Scottish doctors’ deep concerns over workforce;

Sign up to our bulletin for key health & social care updates straight to your inbox and you can follow healthandcare.scot on Google News.