PODCAST: North NHS compensation payments totalled £34m so in episode one of our new series we look at what is going on behind the headlines in Beyond the Briefing

NHS Highland and NHS Grampian paid out a combined £34 million to patients in compensation since 2019 over botched procedures, diagnostic mistakes and other errors.

In this episode, political reporter Scott MacLennan is here to make sense of it all. We trace how the crisis in social care feeds into long waits for ambulances to admit patients before being seen by dedicated staff who are in the words of one MSP “dangerously overstretched and more prone to making mistakes”.

The stories featured in the podcast:

• NHS Highland and NHS Grampian paid out a combined £34m in patient compensation as ‘frontline NHS staff dangerously overstretched’

• Report by Inverness MP Angus MacDonald exposes depths of Highland care sector crisis as he calls for £60m rescue package

• Ambulance waits to admit patients to NHS Highland hospitals soars by 16% delaying crews by 14,544 hours last year – the equivalent of 606 days

• NHS Highland is accused of being too afraid of the Scottish Government to fight to retain local services

The Scottish Government has issued various iterations of NHS recovery plans, most recently health secretary Neil Gray targeted “reductions to long-waits and the pressures we currently see” with an extra £200 million.

Episode one of Beyond the Briefing focusses on how the NHS – unquestionably one of the most valued organisations in the UK – is under threat from implosion as politicians wrestle with securing the future of the health service.

It'll be available via Spotify, Apple and others.