Inside the NHS 🏥 Would you go private to see a GP? The new ‘two-tier’ healthcare
Private GPs are on the rise in Scotland – so what does it mean for patients, and the wider NHS?
Health Correspondent
Helen McArdle is the Health Correspondent for The Herald. She joined in 2008 and went on to become a news reporter and transport correspondent. Since 2020, her focus has been on the impact of the pandemic on the NHS. Ms McArdle’s journalism honours include News Story of the Year at the Medical Journalism Association awards and she was also named Health & Science Reporter of the Year at the British Journalism Awards in 2018 for The Herald’s coverage of NHS Tayside’s use of charity donations to cover general spending. She was named Specialist Reporter of the Year at the 2022 Scottish Press Awards and picked up the Stephen White Award for the Reporting of Science in a Non-Science Context at the Association for British Science Writers awards.
Helen McArdle is the Health Correspondent for The Herald. She joined in 2008 and went on to become a news reporter and transport correspondent. Since 2020, her focus has been on the impact of the pandemic on the NHS. Ms McArdle’s journalism honours include News Story of the Year at the Medical Journalism Association awards and she was also named Health & Science Reporter of the Year at the British Journalism Awards in 2018 for The Herald’s coverage of NHS Tayside’s use of charity donations to cover general spending. She was named Specialist Reporter of the Year at the 2022 Scottish Press Awards and picked up the Stephen White Award for the Reporting of Science in a Non-Science Context at the Association for British Science Writers awards.
Private GPs are on the rise in Scotland – so what does it mean for patients, and the wider NHS?
Two council care homes in South Lanarkshire will close after the Scottish Government rejected urgent appeals for extra social care funding.
Recruitment of specialist cancer doctors to the NHS in Scotland is "dire" with many training posts going unfilled, a leading expert has said. Dr Frances Yuille, a recently retired breast cancer oncologist and chair of the Scottish Standing Committee at the Royal College of Radiologists (RCR), said much more needed to be done to attract young doctors and to retain clinicians longer towards the end of their careers.
Scotland's largest health board has launched a new digital service which aims to speed-up diagnosis of a common respiratory disorder and cut waiting times for treatment. The digital diagnostic service for patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) will bring together appointments management, clinical information, test data, and outcome letters.
The number of private GP clinics in Scotland has more than tripled since the pandemic as patients have struggled to get appointments on the NHS. Doctors warned that true scale of the "two-tier" healthcare crisis will be even worse as available figures do not disclose how many clinicians have made the switch to working full or part-time in the independent sector.
One of the reasons Nour Halabi wanted to move to the UK was because she "believes in the NHS". The American academic, originally from Philadelphia, had no qualms about contributing financially.
Why is Britain so sick? Statistics published earlier this month revealed that the number of adults aged 16 to 64 who were not working due to long-term sickness had reached a new high of 2,829,000 by the beginning of this year.
Water damage affecting an operating theatre in Fife caused a power outage in the middle of a patient's procedure earlier this year, according to data obtained by the Herald on dozens of "deeply worrying" building safety incidents across NHS Scotland.
As government officials prepare to answer questions from the profession, The Herald is launching a survey of our readers. The Scottish Government is facing a ‘six-month checkup’ on its reform of NHS dentistry which it introduced last November.
A Midlothian woman has been identified as only one of 12 people in the world to carry a newly discovered genetic mutation linked to the development of a rare and incurable lung disease. Bailey Lothian, 22, from Bonnyrigg, was diagnosed with Primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD) aged 10 after years of testing.
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