Scottish Telehealth Centre Heavily Criticised In Leaked Report

The Scottish Centre for Telehealth and Telecare (SCTT) has come under fire after a damning report into NHS 24’s management of the service.

The centre is responsible for developing technology solutions for patients across Scotland and has more than doubled in size from 14 to 30 staff in just a three year period.

The Scottish government has committed to providing an annual budget of £2m to the centre, which pays nine staff members with senior manager salaries.

Regional newspaper Herald Scotland has seen a report by international auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) which is concerned about how SCTT has been overseen.

“NHS 24 governance of SCTT direction and performance has been largely absent in an effective manner since 2012,” the report is said to read.

It goes on to question whether the seniority of a number of staff is justified and claims the benefits of some of the projects the centre handles are not clear to outsiders.

To tackle the issue, PwC recommends a “preferably” independent review to ensure the payroll costs are clearly justified.

“SCTT Highly Regarded”

“Scotland is highly regarded in Europe for its work in and around telehealth and telecare, and the SCTT has been instrumental in building up this reputation,” a Scottish government statement claimed.

“The SCTT has been successful over the last few years at attracting several million pounds of inward investment, estimated by NHS 24 to be around €4.8m.

“NHS 24 has taken the right step in commissioning an external review of their governance arrangements over the SCTT and we would expect them to carefully consider the report and take action to address the findings.

“The Scottish government will also consider the findings of the report in detail and look at what more can be done to effectively oversee the work of the SCTT, particularly work commissioned on its behalf,” it added.

© 24N.biz