Is it just me or is it a comparatively good time to be practising in Scotland?
This week Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland's health and well-being secretary, announced that car parking fees in Scottish hospitals would be abolished.
Well, as long as they weren't PFI ones anyway.
And yesterday first minister Alex Salmond announced legislation barring private firms from running practices.
It reminds me of earlier this year when Ms Sturgeon received a standing ovation at the BMA's annual representatives meeting.
Can you imagine the admittedly charismatic Alan Johnson being so rapturously received?
I
can vividly remember the first time I encountered pay and display at a
hospital (It was Queen Alexandra Hospital, Cosham, in 1999 and I was
health correspondent at The News, Portsmouth) and I found the injustice
of it difficult to stomach.
At
a time when people (be they patients or visitors) are under some of the
greatest stress that they are ever likely to be put under, do they
deserve a warden threatening a clamping if they don't shell out a
not-inconsiderable sum?
What price do you put upon spending time at the bedside of someone who might not have much longer to live?
And quite often hospital visits aren't one offs.
Health minister Ben Bradshaw was quick to explain that England can't have free hospital parking because treatment would suffer because of the £100 million a year it generates.
Well, how can they manage it in both Scotland and Wales then?
Perhaps
part of the reason is that hospitals in Scotland and Wales aren't under
quite the same commercial Payment By Results pressures that their
counterparts in England are.
It
is interesting that at a time when England is very much backing the
influx of private firms into the NHS to improve quality, Scotland is
pulling in exactly the opposite direction. We have quite the little
experiment under our noses to see which system works best.
Which do you think will be the most successful?
neil.durham@haymarket.com