Matheson announces £50m ambulance service funding ahead of ‘challenging’ winter

An extra £50 million of funding is being given to the Scottish Ambulance Service to boost staffing ahead of what the Health Secretary said would be an “extremely challenging” winter for the NHS.

Michael Matheson said the money would help the service recruit a further 317 frontline staff, with 18 new clinicians also to be taken on for a call centre hub where they can help to triage patients.

He also pledged up to £12 million would be spent to expand the Hospital at Home service – which allows people to be treated at home instead of in busy hospitals.

Funding for both was announced as the Scottish Government published its winter plan for the NHS for the coming winter

Mr Matheson said work on this had begun in “early spring, earlier than ever before”.

The Health Secretary told MSPs at Holyrood: “We’re in no doubt this winter will be extremely challenging for our health and social care system.”

But he added: “This winter plan specifically seeks to address the specific operational pressures experienced across the health and social care system over winter, with actions already under way to improve services.”

Recruitment of new staff for the Scottish Ambulance Service is “presently under way”, Mr Matheson said, adding this would “increase capacity for emergency response”.

He said the new clinicians could help “reduce the need for people to go to hospital” with improved triage services for those patients who “may not require an emergency response”.

On additional funding for the Hospital at Home service, he said the money would enable at least 380 more beds for the service this winter, “significantly increasing capacity”.

With acute care provided to patients at their home, he said the service already achieves “equivalent or better results” than hospital treatment.

Expanding the service will allow more people “especially elderly patients, patients with respiratory conditions and children, to receive treatments in the comfort of their own home and will crucially help reduce pressure on our A&E departments this winter”, the Health Secretary said.

He added that a “knock-on impact” would be fewer emergency hospital admissions, reducing pressure on busy A&E departments.

But Conservative health spokesman Dr Sandesh Gulhane said: “All the signs point to another disastrous winter for the NHS under the SNP.”

The new winter NHS plan was published on the same day that figures showed 24,427 deaths were registered between December 2022 and March 2023 –  11% more than the previous winter and the highest total for more than 30 years.

Dr Gulhane, a GP as well as a Tory MSP, said the high number of deaths would “be of little surprise to anyone who had to wait hours to be seen at A&E last winter, to those who were unable to be seen by their GP and thousands more who were left languishing on NHS waiting lists”.

He added: “This makes it all the more important that the SNP Government gets things right this winter, and all year round, so patients are never again subjected to these conditions.”

Labour’s Jackie Baillie said there had been a “staggering” number of winter deaths, while “at the same time delayed discharge was the highest it has ever been last winter”.

Mr Matheson accepted there had been an increase in mortality rates last winter, not just in Scotland but across the UK.

“To try and apply that as if it is some sort of reflection of the present performance of A&E would be inaccurate,” he said.

But he said: “The increase in mortality rates is not peculiar to Scotland, there has been an increase in mortality rates across the whole of the UK, a significant increase.”