Health and social care vision

Overview

On 4 June 2024 the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care set out a new vision for health and social care services in Scotland to address these challenges and give focus to our reform work.

Our vision is to ‘enable people to live longer, healthier and fulfilling lives.’  This is supported by four key areas of work:

• improving population health
• a focus on prevention and early intervention
• providing quality services
• maximising access

All underpinned by a person-centred approach.

As the First Minister outlined on 27 January 2025, we are taking bold and ambitious steps to reform and renew our health service and deliver the change that people in Scotland need now. At the heart of this plan is action to reduce waiting times and making sure people get high quality care, more quickly.

A Government Inspired Question(S6W-34287) accompanied the First Minister’s speech on health on 27 January 2025. This summarises the speech, outlines what will be delivered and by when.

These reforms will: 

• improve access to treatment - reducing immediate pressures by driving down waiting times and clearing backlogs
• shift the balance of care into the community and homes - delivering the right care in the right place while protecting access in hospitals
• deliver a stronger digital first approach to all our health and social care services - improving access to services through innovation and technology
• take a long-term approach to prevention - tackling the root causes of long-term ill-health and disease and helping people to live longer, healthier lives

The First Minister set out that we will:

• publish a detailed operational improvement plan in March 2025
• to be followed by our population health framework (June 2025)
• and our health and social care service renewal framework (June 2025)

Alongside these frameworks the Scottish Government, in collaboration with Public Health Scotland, has developed the Population Health Dashboard. This analytical tool is designed to support local planning and reform by providing robust data on both health outcomes and the wider determinants of health. The dashboard is available via the Scottish Public Health Observatory’s (ScotPHO) online profiles tool.