ABSTRACT
In this chapter we aim to show how the major national reforms of healthcare in Scotland have impacted on the quality and safety of services for patients, carers, and staff. In many ways, when considering the underlying ideas and logic of the way these reforms have been fashioned, Scotland can be seen as a deviant case, in the sense of choosing not to adopt the current orthodoxy of neo-classical economic thinking that has permeated most other developed health systems around the world. It is not as though Scotland is lacking a clear vision of where it wants to get to, nor of how it should get there, but rather it has set its face against neo-liberal ideology and towards a partnership approach that attempts to offer social solidarity and equity of outcomes to its population.
