Auditors slam Scots health and care transport services

Health and social care transport in Scotland is badly co-ordinated and monitored, leading to a waste of money and poor services, Audit Scotland says in a report published today.

The watchdog stops short of backing calls to merge health and social care but urges the various agencies involved to work more closely together to eradicate waste and better meet patient needs.

Conservative Scottish health spokesman Murdo Fraser responded that unifying the budgets ‘would deliver faster response times to those most in most need of care, simplify the planning of transport needs and ease bed blocking’.

Audit Scotland has identified £93m of spending per annum on non-emergency health and social care transport but says a lack of systematic record-keeping means this is a significant under-estimate. The paucity of data, it adds, is also preventing agencies from effectively planning and co-ordinating provision.

It calls on government, local authorities, health boards, regional transport partnerships and the ambulance service to work together to collect data, assess need, benchmark costs and integrate or share services in the interests of better, more efficient services.

‘Joint working across the public sector and with voluntary and private providers is crucial for the successful and sustainable development of transport for health and social care,’ the report says.

It acknowledges that a financial squeeze on these types of services can have a serious impact on people who are elderly, poor or have chronic health and care needs. This makes it all the more important to measure need and provision reliably, it says.

The report calls existing services fragmented, and diagnoses ‘a lack of leadership, ownership and monitoring’. It concludes: ‘The Scottish Government, regional transport partnerships, councils, NHS boards and the ambulance service are not working together effectively.’

Robert Black, auditor general for Scotland, commented: ‘All partners involved in transport for health and social care need to work together to improve the way these services operate.  This is an area where there is scope to make significant improvements and save money without affecting quality.’