ARGYLL and Bute’s chief health and social care officer has pledged to seek an “early” meeting with the new Scottish Government secretary on services in the area.
Evan Beswick has also welcomed the reduction in delayed discharge numbers, although he acknowledged that the number remained “far too high”.
He has also said he will seek to meet with new health and social care secretary Angela Constance, following Ms Constance’s new posting within the cabinet.
Mr Beswick spoke in a report to the Argyll and Bute health and social care partnership’s (HSCP) integration joint board (IJB) for its meeting on Wednesday, May 27.
He said: “We have been moving ahead with the budget decisions made at the last IJB but I wanted to include in my report a ‘You Said, We Did’ summary which outlines how the information we heard through our consultation informed those decisions.
“This transparency and accountability is really important as the year ahead is going to require us to continue to engage with our communities in this thoughtful way.
“I also know board members and the public share concerns around key measures in our system such as delayed discharge. I’m really pleased to report significant reductions in the numbers of people who are in our hospitals when they do not need to be, and yet that remains far too high.
“At the time of writing 49 people and their families are impacted by this constraint in the flow of our integrated system and we are working hard to reduce that further, despite the challenging backdrop of increased demand and fragility in particular across our social care sector, and also within some of our children’s services.”
Mr Beswick added: “We have recently had an election in Scotland, and I’d like to assure members that I will be seeking an early meeting with the new cabinet secretary for health and social care to outline some of our challenges across Argyll and Bute, and to highlight some of the fantastic work that teams are doing to support the health and care of our population.”
