Current status: Answered by Shona Robison on 13 December 2016
To ask the Scottish Government how much each NHS board has allocated from its budget to support winter resilience for the 2016-17 season.
The Scottish Government provides baseline funding to NHS Boards to deliver services that meet the needs of their local population. Within this context, it is for Boards to determine how best to utilise resources including their application towards winter resilience.
However, in addition to baseline funding, the Scottish Government specifically allocated £3 million to NHS Boards during 2016-17 to help ease pressure on Scotland's NHS across the winter months. In addition, other funding allocated during 2016-17 to assist with winter pressures will include:
£9 million investment during 2016-17 from the Unscheduled Care Fund which boards are using to continue to implement the SixEssential Actions Programme to improving unscheduled care. £30 million investment specifically to reduce delayed discharges in 2016-17.Over £10 million will be allocated to health boards during 2016-17 to support improvements in first outpatient waiting times. The investment will allow the NHS to see thousands of patients that are waiting for an appointment more quickly, as well as helping to build additional capacity into the system ahead of winter. It will fund an estimated 40,000 additional outpatient appointments across Scotland over the next few months, in areas such as orthopedics, ophthalmology and gastroenterology.
This brings the total investment by the Scottish Government for winter resilience to around £52 million in 2016-17.