NHS Lothian lowest funded health board per head of population.
NHS Lothian have not hit a single one of their performance targets and have the lowest funding per head of population, with £1,540 based on mid 2018 population estimates.
This compares to NHS Borders who £1,740 funding per head of population and are hitting 37.5% of their targets.
Lothian MSP Miles Briggs has previously criticised the NHS Scotland Resource Allocation Committee, NRAC, formula used by SNP Ministers to allocate funding to each health board.
The total shortfall relative to the NRAC target allocation for NHS Lothian, since 2009/10 when NRAC was introduced, amounts to £365.7 million.
The latest figures presented to the Health and Sport Committee at Holyrood show that NHS Lothian’s funding allocation was £136.3 million for 2019/20, £11.6 million short of the NHS Lothian NRAC Target Allocation, the biggest shortfall in funding of any health board.
Lothian has the fastest growing population in Scotland, growing twice as fast as the Scottish average, and a rapidly ageing population as well.
Miles Briggs MSP, Scottish Conservative health spokesman, said: “NHS Lothian is already the lowest funded health board per head of population in Scotland and this is reflected in their performance, not meeting a single performance target in the last year.
“Whenever NHS Lothian has long waiting times for treatments, are short-staffed or miss key targets, SNP Ministers blame the health boards and refuse to offer support.
“It is patients in Lothian who are suffering due to the health boards being under resourced and under staffed by SNP Ministers who are distracted by Scottish Indpendence.
“Staff in NHS Lothian are under more pressure than any other health board with high demand on services and low support from the Secretary for Health.
“It is vital that NHS Lothian gets more support from SNP Ministers in the next NHS budget to give allow them to make improvement to the delivery of services.”
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