The chairman of the NHS Fife Board has said that the local health service is prepared for winter.
Allan Burns has told The Courier that the local health authority is “in a much stronger place” to deal with any spike in patients should numbers increase over the winter months.
It comes after major criticisms were levelled at NHS Fife after it struggled to cope with the number of patients attending at hospitals and surgeries last year, despite having experienced particularly tough winters for the two previous years.
However, adamant that lessons have been learned, Mr Burns said services are better prepared now than they had been before.
“We are in a much stronger place, although I don’t want to overcommit,” he said.
“We have taken a lot of steps to make sure that if we experience what we experienced last year, then we would meet the challenge.
“We are confident we have done everything that we can do at this point in time to allow us to get through winter.”
Last year saw a notable rise in the number of cases of norovirus, the winter vomiting bug, and last year NHS Fife said that it had prepared a special plan to deal with winter conditions.
That came after bed blocking, or delayed discharges, reached crisis level in January 2011, when there were 181 patients waiting to get home.
Mr Burns hopes that local people can play a part in preventing illness from spreading, including through the uptake of vaccinations where available.