EXPERTS have urged health services across the UK to learn lessons from Scotland’s NHS, though they warn that “serious” financial pressures could jeopardise its “unique system for improving the quality of healthcare.”

A report by the Nuffield Trust think tank found that NHS Scotland provides “possible alternatives for an English system with a tendency towards too many short-term, top-down initiatives that often fail to reach the front line.”

Entitled Learning from Scotland’s NHS, the report praises Scotland’s “pioneering initiatives” such as video links for outpatient care in remote areas as well as trusting clinical staff to drive improvements in care and testing new methods in small-scale projects before rolling them out across the service.