NHS forced to send X-rays 9,500 miles away for diagnosis
PATIENTS in Scotland are being diagnosed by doctors as far away as Australia as private companies are brought in to tackle the crippling shortage of staff in the NHS.
There are so few specialists available to interpret and analyse patients’ vital scan results that the health service is spending more than £3 million a year ‘outsourcing’ radiology services.
As a result, thousands of patients who have X-rays, MRI scans or CT scans are having their diagnosis made not by NHS experts at the hospital where they are being treated, but by privately employed doctors in New Zealand, Sweden, Germany, Italy and Spain.
Some consultants must first ring a call centre before they can discuss their patients’ results with the relevant radiologist. The outsourcing comes despite the Government’s pledge to save Scotland from the ‘creeping privatisation’ of the NHS south of the Border. With £6.6 million paid to eight private firms over two years, it is a lucrative source of income for those companies.
Scottish Tory health spokesman Miles Briggs said: ‘The SNP is forever complaining about others supposedly privatising the NHS yet here it is paying fortunes to outsource work thousands of miles away because of its own chaotic workforce planning.’
National Services Scotland (NSS) is a national health board which helps provide services used by the whole country. The Public Contracts Scotland website reveals details of the contract for ‘Radiology Reporting Services’ for which NSS is the buyer. It says: ‘The primary service will be the reporting of radiology examinations which cannot be accommodated by staff of the participating authorities and can be carried out remotely.’
Latest available figures from 2015 show there were 434 radiology staff in Scotland. With vacancies said to be about 10 per cent, that means a shortfall of 40.
Hospital staff send scan results to the companies electronically which are remotely analysed and the findings sent back. Dr Grant Baxter, Glasgow-based consultant radiologist and chair of the Royal College of Radiologists’ Standing Scottish Committee, said: ‘Demand for scans is constantly growing, but capacity to interpret those scans is not. Imaging departments across Scotland cannot cope on a day-to-day basis and as a result are increasingly outsourcing work to independent companies.
‘Outsourcing does not replace the need for on-site radiologists who can interact constantly with patients and fellow clinicians.’
Richard Evans, chief executive officer of the Society and College of Radiographers, said: ‘The practice is used quite widely across the UK. It’s not terribly popular because radiology is a team enterprise and having a member of the team that you can never meet or converse with is not ideal.’
Daniel Sourial, CEO of the firm Radiology Reporting Online, which deals primarily with out-of-hours cases for two Scottish health boards, using Australian-based staff, said: ‘In terms of the quality of the interaction that our radiologists have with the referring sites, it’s as robust if not more so than if you were there in person. Our responsiveness is immediate.’
A Scottish Government spokesman said: ‘Under this Government, the number of consultant clinical radiologists has increased by 45.1 per cent to over 324 whole-time equivalent [posts]. In spite of these increases, rising demand is putting pressure on radiology services. That is why we have increased the numbers of radiology trainees by 26 over the past four years.’
‘Imaging departments cannot cope’