Chamber and committees

Forgive me if I go over some things that we have already discussed, but it is not always the budget that restricts choices. This is also about models of care. We will all have examples from our constituency work of someone who, having been assessed by an allied health professional or social worker as requiring a level of support to live their life, will then be told that that support is not available. It is not all about money; in fact, in the committee’s inquiry into rural healthcare, we found that sometimes the issue was availability of service.

Yes, I was just going to ask if he wanted to come in on that.

In your answer to Sandesh Gulhane, you touched on productivity. Will you give us a notion of what factors might have contributed to the fall in hospital productivity, as reported by the Institute for Fiscal Studies?

Do you have any reflections on what can be done to address that? You have spoken about reductions in capital spend. How would you respond to that?

Katie Cuthbertson, do you have any comments on the question of unmet need and potential hidden patients?

That is helpful.

It is being predicated on that.

Good morning, panel. Thanks for your answers so far.

I want to talk a little bit about the long-term care commission. Last week, Alzheimer Scotland was in Parliament, talking to colleagues. The commission’s report focuses on long-term care; obviously, a feature of that is residential care, but it also encompasses quite well a lot of the themes that we have been talking about such as the real cost of care, how it is paid for, alternative care models and improving commissioning.

The improvement plan does not discuss the underlying issue of funding. We have just been talking about the challenges facing social workers, and I imagine that operating or trying to operate in a human rights-based way in a time of austerity is soul destroying. Obviously, local authorities determine how much of their budget goes into social care, as does, I believe, the NHS, with regard to what goes to integration joint boards. Should—or could—the broader question of the funding of long-term care be addressed by the collaboration?

Good morning, panel. Thanks for being with us. I would like to ask about unmet need post-Covid-19. To what extent is there unmet need and hidden patients?

By natural supports, do you mean someone’s network—their family and friends and so on?