Talking-up Scotland

In the ‘Scottish’ Daily Express today:

‘Miles Briggs, Scottish Conservative shadow health secretary, said: “The breath-taking hypocrisy of the SNP is all on show here. Maybe the SNP should try looking in the mirror sometime as the SNP itself has repeatedly signed multi-million-pound healthcare contracts with American companies over the last decade’.

It turns out that Briggs is talking about the not-for-profit Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s Scottish Patient Safety Programme (SPSP) bought in 2008 by the Scottish Government to design, promote, and implement the Scottish Patient Safety Programme credited with this stunning success:

‘Scotland’s health system is to be congratulated for a multi-year effort that has produced some of the largest population-wide reductions in surgical deaths ever documented.’

A World Health Organization safety checklist to encourage teamwork and communication during operations has been associated with a 37% reduction in the death rate after operations, with a notably dramatic fall since 2007/8.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/bjs.11151

So, if it is hypocrisy to buy in a system is it also hypocrisy to buy drugs or ambulances? Remember IHI staff do not work with patients. This is not like NHS England farming out whole services to private companies.