30-04-2025
NHS Forth Valley ready to work with other boards as part of national drive
NHS Forth Valley is playing its part in a national move that will see much more collaboration between health boards across Scotland.
Chief executive Ross McGuffie told members of NHS Forth Valley 's board this week that the local NHS is well used to cooperating with other boards and assured them any changes would not be to the detriment of local patients.
In planning for the year ahead, he said, Forth Valley has been able to offer out 6775 procedures within specific specialities to other Boards, while local residents will still be seen within the waiting time standard for those specialities.
The chief executive also reported that Forth Valley has previously delivered more than 20,000 procedures for other health authorities, including breast cancer care for patients in Grampian and the Western Isles as well as urology procedures for patients in Tayside.
He was responding to a letter from Director General Health and Social Care, Caroline Lamb, who has written to all NHS chief executives and chairs to tell them that they "are required to ensure that your Boards actively engage in collaborative arrangements with other Health Boards.
"This includes sharing resources, expertise and services, where appropriate, to optimise patient outcomes and improve efficiency across the system.
"Such co-operation is critical to achieving the best possible care for our population, especially given the complex challenges we face in addressing health inequalities and meeting the demands on services."
Her intervention followed First Minister John Swinney's statement in January on Improving Public Services and NHS Renewal in January, which emphasised the need for NHS Boards to work collaboratively to improve access to care.
Professor McGuffie explained to members that this would work in three ways.
Firstly, mutual aid, where a service is falling over, and they require external support to bridge a gap; secondly, providing areas of spare capacity to other boards that will allow services across Scotland to maximise use all resources/
The final strand is boards developing specialities and Prof. McGuffie said that discussions are continuing through Regional Planning Boards at how best to develop this.
He told the board that early discussions seemed positive but added: "We need to make sure that the governance is absolutely clear and defined in terms of how that will flow and work its way through."
The chair of the board, Neena Mahal, said that while it could mean services being delivered differently, she was hopeful it would mean them being delivered "in the best way".
Members of the board were generally supportive of the changes but keen to ensure that NHS Forth Valley patients would not be disadvantaged by any changes.
Professor McGuffie said: "It's up to us to identify where we've got capacity and then offer it out to others, so I think we've got a real control around that in the model we've been discussing."
Director of Nursing, Professor Frances Dodds, said she was supportive of the proposals but agreed it would be key to have "absolutely watertight" governance arrangements in place to protect residents and NHS staff who might be affected.
