Health and Community Care Committee, 06 Sep 2000

Meeting date: Wednesday, September 6, 2000

Official Report 300KB pdf

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Organisations (Contacts)

We have pulled together some of the approaches that have been made to the committee. A paper will have been circulated to members. I am happy to take comments on the subject today. Alternatively, members might wish to delay discussion of the matter until a later meeting and send comments to me by e-mail.

I predict that more and more representations will be made with regard to the acute services review. I suggest that, while we should not deal with them all at the same time, we should bear that in mind when we consider the acute services review.

The basis on which we undertook work on petitions was that the job of the committee was not to make decisions on local acute services reviews or to cherry-pick issues relating to those services. If we did, we would not be able to get through our work. That decision will reduce the number of people whom the committee invites to come before it. We have made it clear all along what our position is.

I urge committee members strongly to look favourably on the request that we have had for a joint briefing session on the Health Technology Board for Scotland's clinical standards board and the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network. If members are anything like me, they will be confused about who does what. It will be useful for the committee to make early contact with the Health Technology Board for Scotland now that it has staff in place. We have had similar informal briefings in the past that have been useful, so I urge members to consider the request.

I invite members to e-mail the clerks on the issues in the paper.

I agree about the Health Technology Board for Scotland. In relation to the approaches from the other bodies, it might be useful to think about asking members to volunteer to visit projects on behalf of the committee. That might be more useful than having organisations take up a lot of committee time. However, we should leave that until we discuss the committee's working procedures.

In the past, I have made similar visits to organisations when we have not had sufficient committee time—it is often a better use of time.

What is Nora Radcliffe suggesting about a possible subject for inquiry? Is she suggesting that we conduct an inquiry into the provision of medical services in Portsoy?

Yes. I will tell Nora Radcliffe that we are here to conduct substantial inquiries into the provision of general medical services throughout Scotland and that, as much as we wish the people of Portsoy well, we would not get other work done if we individualised our inquiries as she suggests.

Meeting closed at 12:32.