The Scottish government has quietly ditched an SNP election promise to boost health service activity across a range of key areas within a year of taking office.

A much-anticipated NHS recovery plan published today says the goal now is to deliver a series of improvements ‘as quickly as possible’ over the next five years.

The pledge to increase activity to 110% of pre-pandemic levels, which applied to inpatient, day case and outpatient activity, had previously attracted criticism for being unrealistic when staff were already exhausted.

The Scottish government is promising to increase activity in these areas ‘substantially’ beyond pre-pandemic levels and is setting aside more than £1bn to do so.

The new Centre for Sustainable Delivery at the Golden Jubilee hospital, led by former CMO Catherine Calderwood, is set to take a crucial role by making the health service more efficient, the government said.

Reacting to the plan, organisations representing nurses and doctors said the Scottish government had failed to do enough to stop people leaving their professions.

Launching the strategy at the Golden Jubilee today, Nicola Sturgeon said: “Tackling the backlog of care is essential and will be a priority. But we want to go further than that and deliver an NHS that is innovative, sustainable and stronger than ever before.”

She also stated that a priority would be to restore face-to-face GP consultations as quickly and safely as possible, while ensuring people can continue to opt for video consultations if they prefer.

As part of the plans, the government says it will recruit an additional 1,500 clinical and non-clinical staff for a network of elective care centres by 2026, as well an extra 1,000 primary care mental health workers.

To improve the supply of health staff, it says it will increase medical student places by 100 and put millions into international and national recruitment campaigns.

The Scottish health service carried out roughly 270,000 inpatient and day case procedures in a normal pre-pandemic year.

This will rise by 55,500 over the next five years, the recovery plan pledges, with the additional activity coming from a network of new national treatment centres and ‘additional activity at NHS board level’.

Meanwhile an extra 140,000 outpatient appointments will be done every year by 2026, the government is promising.

This hinges on the work of the Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CfSD), which is to redesign care pathways to free up consultants’ time across the country.

Jann Gardner, who is CEO of the Golden Jubilee, previously told healthandcare.scot the new body would ensure new approaches were adopted by health boards across the country.

There are further commitments to boost annual diagnostic procedures, with the use of mobile MRI scanners and additional CT units.

Ahead of the May 2021 elections, Nicola Sturgeon outlined an ambitious plan to boost NHS capacity.

She said: “Central to this plan will be a commitment to increase – within the first year of the new Parliament – inpatient, day-case and outpatient treatment activity by 10 per cent compared to pre-pandemic activity levels, and then to maintain that level for the rest of the term.”

Responding to the announcement, Dr Lewis Morrison of the British Medical Association Scotland said pledges like this fuelled “unrealistic” public expectations.

“We do not have the capacity or workforce to deliver on this target, especially in the timescales being talked about,” he said.

Today’s plan does not contain the one-year commitment, instead promising to increase NHS capacity “by at least 10% as quickly as is possible in order to address the backlog in care and meet ongoing healthcare needs…

'…[the plan] also sets out the over £1bn of targeted investment need to deliver improvements in the short term, throughout this 5 year term of the Scottish Parliament, and sustainably for the future.’

Read more: Many worrying gaps in NHS recovery plan; Collaboration will reimagine patient pathways; Medics voice doubts over NHS catch-up pledge; Analysis: The ‘once for Scotland’ recovery plan

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