'Years of improvement' lost by health board due to Covid

Jeff Ace said 10 to 15 years of waiting time improvement had been lost due to Covid

The chief executive of a Scottish health board has said "years of improvement" in service provision have been lost due to Covid.

NHS Dumfries and Galloway's Jeff Ace warned the recovery period from the pandemic would be measured in "months and years".

Infection rates in the region have been coming down in line with the rest of the country as restrictions are lifted.

However, Mr Ace said the impact on healthcare would not be resolved overnight.

"We're a damaged system, you know, we've been running two years in an emergency situation now - two years dealing with issues and problems that we've never seen before," he said.

"Its disruption to our normal service model - whether that's elective care or the normal way that our GP services and our community services work - has just been incredibly profound."

Mr Ace said the recovery period would be measured in months and years

He said that made any planning for getting services back to normal very difficult.

"Somehow, with staff teams that are pretty much exhausted and pretty thinly stretched at the moment, we've got to create a recovery trajectory," he said.

"We've got to get people talking about improvement again and how do we get back to the levels of service that we've seen in the past."

However, Mr Ace said that would take some time even once those conversations began.

"If you look at simple waiting times, we've probably lost 10 or 15 years of improvement in the last two years," he said.

"It's of that scale and so the recovery period is going to be measured in months and years.

"It's not going to be a week's progress that we'll be suddenly flying again and everything will feel normal.

"This will be the challenge of the rest of our careers to rebuild a service model that really meets the performance targets that people would expect us to achieve."

He said there had been "flashes of optimism" in the past but warned cases could kick back up again.

"We're all nervously, I guess, studying around the world, seeing what's happening," he said.

"At the moment it looks a positive picture just about everywhere but clearly Covid is a risk.

"It's a novel virus, it's not at its endpoint of mutation.

"So, yes, there is that uncertainty that once again we could be having to focus on the virus again."