I want to share this bit of good news with everyone: according to the Glasgow Herald today, Scotland's health boards have achieved their targets for the fourth year in a row!
Isn't that wonderful?
Sadly, the targets we're looking at are for efficiency savings. I might be more encouraged if the targets were for reducing waiting lists for operations or giving patients access to - for example, physio in less than the average of 7 weeks it takes in my health board area - or improving access to specialist nurses rather than cutting the numbers of nursing and medical staff and closing wards.
But hey, we can't have everything, so we'll just have to accept - again, according to today's Herald - that NHS patients may have to be sent abroad because their local hospitals can't meet the legal requirement of operating within 12 weeks. And we'll have to live with the knowledge that places like Yorkhill (same source) will continue to rely on fundraising by patients and their families. And that breast-screening will continue to be the one-size-fits-all provision it is, instead of more money being put into research to ensure 4,000 women a year in the UK avoid unnecessary surgery (the Herald again).
A saving's a saving. however pointless it may look to me.
And by the way, is the Herald really worth
£1.10 a throw? Not buying it would be a wee saving for me and might reduce my blood pressure, which must go sky-high when I read their reports on the NHS: thin on facts and devoid of any kind of critical comment.
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