New roles and relationships in the NHS – barriers to change

The incoming Labour Government’s vision for reforming the NHS in Scotland was outlined in the White Paper Designed to Care. While bearing similarities to the proposals outlined for the rest of the UK, it also had distinctive differences. Organisational structures, roles, and relationships between the different parts of the NHS were to be fundamentally altered, particularly in primary and community care. This paper reports upon a series of interviews undertaken across several Health Board areas, with key stakeholders involved in the primary and community sectors. These interviews were intended to examine the development and evolution of the new organisational arrangements, and to identify potential barriers to the successful implementation of Designed to Care. Several barriers and sources of institutional resistance to the new roles and relationships were found during this study, and are discussed. Suggestions upon how these may be overcome and implementation improved are then made.