Is the NHS in Scotland about to ‘fall over’?

Will NHS Scotland withstand the winter? According to draft minutes of a meeting of CEOs from each health board in September, there is growing concern the health service will not be able to operate normally over the winter months. It ‘is not possible to continue to run the range of programmes’ it reads, before stating that ‘unscheduled care is going to fall over in the near term before planned care falls over’.

The warning fits a pattern. Over the summer, the Milton Keynes University Hospital Foundation Trust boss Joe Harrison made headlines when he told a meeting with the Health Service Journal that ‘we’re in danger of all sitting around the campfire singing “kumbaya” as the Titanic sinks’, referring to the dire state of NHS England services months before the hardships of winter.

The data backs up reports from NHS bosses that the situation is deteriorating, rapidly. Scotland’s A&E waiting times have plunged since the pandemic, only falling further since life has returned to normal from the target of 95 per cent of patients to be seen within four hours.