On Friday evening 22 March 2013 Dr Iain McNicol MBE. offered an audience at the Heritage Centre an enlightening talk on the Dewar Report into Healthcare in the Highlands. 15 minutes into the talk a 20 hour power cut began, but despite this Iain’s flow continued in the gloom as others gathered candles.
Powerpoint was rendered irrelevant but lain had some excellent information boards and the subject needed no digital enhancing.
Talk on the Dewar Report 22 March 2013
Talk on the Dewar Report 22 March 2013 Dr Iain McNicol
Talk on the Dewar Report 22 March 2013 Dr Iain McNicol
Talk on the Dewar Report 22 March 2013
Sir John Dewar’s report was commissioned in 1910 to attempt to overcome the difficulties of implementing the National Insurance Act in crofting communities. The report offered a vivid description of the desperate state of medical provision particularly in the rural areas of the Highlands and Islands which covered Argyll, Caithness, Inverness, Ross and Cromarty, Sutherland, Orkney and Shetland and the Highlands of Perthshire.
The commissioners travelled widely and eventually produced a report that recommended setting up a centrally planned provision of care which offered the now famous “free at the point of delivery” which, within 20 years, transformed medical services to the area. This organisation, the Highlands and Islands Medical Service, acted as a blueprint for the NHS in Scotland, England and far beyond. 2012 was the centenary of the presentation of Dewar’s report and for this we all have reason to feel proud and grateful.