Over-40s scheme 'a total waste of money'

NHS money totalling hundreds of thousands of pounds is being wasted offering health checks in Scotland after trials showed only one in ten used the service.

The Life Begins at 40 programme, which rolled out across Scotland last month, invites people to assess their health online or over the phone when they reach the age of 40.

But GPs meeting in Clydebank yesterday said a pilot scheme in Grampian found only 10 per cent of patients used the service.

The British Medical Association (BMA) conference heard that the service would be mostly used by the middle-class worried well, rather than those most in need of health advice.

Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon, who was also speaking at the event, defended the Life Begins at 40 scheme, saying it was the right thing to do.

The programme was announced last month as part of a 15 million package of services to help people over 40 check up on their health. This included 11m to extend so-called Keep Well checks in the poorest communities and 3.5m to fund a four-year pilot project looking into the feasibility of "heart MOTs" for over-40s.

The Life Begins service, costing 285,000 a year to run, was also rolled out to cover the whole of Scotland after its pilot scheme. Speaking at the BMA's Scottish Local Medical Committee, Steve Haigh, a GP in West Lothian, questioned the value of the programme.

"Life Begins At 40 is one part of a 15 million package to help people over 40 check on their health by accessing an online questionnaire or speaking to an NHS 24 adviser to receive individually targeted health information," he said.

"But surely the same is already available online and in every pharmacy and GP surgery across the country."

Dr Haigh said a lot of doctors would rather see NHS 24 improve the cost effectiveness of the services it already provides.

"There appear to be no examples of truly cost-effective individual prevention programmes," he said. "They favour affluent groups and they widen inequalities."

Dean Marshall, chair of the BMA's Scottish GPs committee, described the scheme as "a total waste of money".

GPs voted unanimously in favour of a motion condemning the use of taxpayers' money on the project.

Murray Macpherson, a GP in Renfrewshire, asked Ms Sturgeon if the low uptake of the Grampian pilot scheme justified the expense of rolling the campaign out in Scotland and to the worried-well middle classes.

Ms Sturgeon said the Scottish Government had made tackling health inequalities a key aim.

"We are piloting different approaches to health checks. We have been very supportive financially and in other ways of Keep Well health check programme," she said.

"But we unashamedly want to pilot other approaches because such is the scale of this we want to see what works."We have piloted certain things rather than go straight to roll-out because that allows you to test things and if it doesn't work have the honesty to say we won't do that any more."