By Marjory Inglis, health reporter

NHS TAYSIDE is not planning to employ more staff with an extra £7 million this year from the Scottish Government to cut hospital waiting times.

The health authority’s chief operating officer Gerry Marr said last night he and his colleagues were looking at the way patients go through referral and treatment, to improve what health managers call “the patient pathway.”

What they are trying to do is find more efficient ways of doing what they do now—cutting out delays and inefficiencies—instead of expanding existing systems to accommodate more patients.

Mr Marr is keen to cut out what can be a wasteful first visit to an out-patient clinic to see a specialist. Often the consultant can do nothing until he or she has results which have to be ordered, and the patient asked to return on another day.

The chief operating officer feels that, in many cases, these tests could be taken before the patient is referred to the specialist, who would then have the results at first consultation.

Mr Marr said, “Why can’t we have a protocol-based referral that in effect misses out that first patient appointment so that the first time the specialist sees you he has got the results?”

Local hospitals have made changes in some departments to test systems for first appointments but the chief operating officer said more could be done.

He said, “The changes are not universal. There are still some delays in the system and some scope for improvement.”

He spoke after his senior management team met yesterday to discuss how they could re-design systems to meet what Mr Marr called “our ever more challenging targets.”

He said the meeting was scheduled ahead of health secretary Nicola Sturgeon’s announcement on Wednesday on plans for a legally binding guarantee that no patient would wait more than 12 weeks for surgery after diagnosis.

Mr Marr said it was coincidence that the meeting to discuss improvements to waiting times occurred the day after Ms Sturgeon’s announcement.

He said, “I think the challenge around referral to treatment is not just about throwing money at hiring more people.

“We need to not think we are just going to build more capacity, but we are actually going to have to improve the patient journey.”

Tayside’s acute hospitals are seeing a rise in demand for orthopaedic treatments such as hip and knee replacements, from an increasingly elderly population.

Dermatology has experienced a 20% surge in referrals and referrals to plastic surgery continue to rise.

Mr Marr said he and his colleagues were “confident” of meeting waiting time targets—just as they had met targets over the last few years.