Extra £2.6m for National Treatment Centre Highland 

New investment from Scottish government will enable NTC Highland to deliver thousands of additional orthopaedic and ophthalmic operations each year 

The Scottish government has announced additional investment of £2.6m for the National Treatment Centre (NTC) Highland to help in recruiting news nurses, anaesthetists and healthcare support workers in a bid to increase capacity and tackle waiting times. 

Photo by hysw001 / Pixabay

Such focused investment can be highly effective. Last year, NTC Highland completed an extra 2,560 cataract procedures thanks to the sum it received from £30m additional government funding for targeted planned care procedures.  

With the new staff in place thanks to the new money, NTC Highland is expected to carry out some 8,418 procedures over the coming year – 67% more than the 5,054 commissioned last year. There will be beneficiaries across the north of Scotland, with procedures carried out for patients from NHS Highland, NHS Grampian, NHS Tayside and NHS Shetland. 

The funding is part of £200m allocated in the Scottish government Budget with the specific aim of tackling waiting times and delayed discharge, while improve hospital flow across the country. 

Neil Gray MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, says: ‘In the two years since its opening, National Treatment Centre Highland has provided life-changing treatment to thousands of people living in the north of Scotland. This new funding of £2.6m will help the state-of-the-art facility to deliver thousands of additional procedures every year – including operations for cataracts and joint replacements.    

‘We know in the past too many people have waited too long for treatment, and the First Minister and I have set out a plan to change that.  We will deliver more than 150,000 extra appointments nationally and procedures in the coming year to ensure people receive the care they need as quickly as possible – targeting the longest waiting patients and optimising the use of our National Treatment Centres to substantially increase capacity.’

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