Cut the Number of NHS Boards and Employ 200 More Nurses Says Ash Regan MSP

The Alba Party Holyrood Leader Ash Regan MSP has today (Friday 29th December) called for the Scottish Government to carry out a review of the number of NHS Boards in Scotland, with a view to moving to a smaller number, and to re-invest the savings into front line patient care.

Ms Regan has published new figures which show that the combined costs to NHS Scotland of the salaries of the executive management teams across the 14 territorial NHS Boards is between £12,265,000 and £12,730,000 while the combined costs to NHS Scotland of the payments to Board members is between £3,340,000 and £4,555,000.

Scotland currently has 14 territorial Health Boards and seven special Health Boards.

In a statement Ash Regan said:

“We do not need 14 separate territorial health boards and seven special health boards for a country the size of Scotland with a population of five million people.

“These figures show that Scotland is spending valuable NHS resources on unnecessary duplication of staff and expensive bureaucracy at the expense of front line patient care.

“If by cutting the number of NHS Boards we can reduce the numbers of chief executives, finance directors and other senior managers such as directors of communication we could easily halve the amount we currently spend on employing senior managers and in paying for board members.

“Halving the amount we currently spend on employing executive management teams across 14 Boards and in paying Board members would free up between £7,806,500 and £8,642,500. That would be enough to employ an additional 200 newly qualified nurses.

“It makes no sense for smaller health boards to be spending over a million pounds in employing senior managers when that money could be better used to employ nurses, health visitors, midwives, doctors and other health professionals.

“It is long past time for the Scottish Government to carry out a review of the number of Health Boards in Scotland. I am not advocating centralisation of all functions into one NHS Board but rather moving to a smaller number of boards which would allow savings to be made. Those savings could then be re-invested in front line patient care.”