Scotland considers radical reform of hospital services

A review is to be conducted into the way hospital services are delivered in Scotland to ensure that patients are being given the highest standard of clinical treatment. The announcement has led to fears that certain services could be withdrawn from local hospitals and concentrated instead on larger, specialist centres.

The review was announced in a government white paper, The Scottish Health Service: Ready for the Future, which maps out a strategy to take the NHS in Scotland into the next century. It emphasises the …