Question reference: S6W-20978
- Asked by: Sue Webber, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
- Date lodged: 4 September 2023
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Current status: Answered by Elena Whitham on 19 September 2023
Question
To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-19817 by Elena Whitham on 17 July 2023, what steps the MAT Implementation Support Team (MIST) is taking to work with (a) Alcohol and Drug Partnerships (ADPs) and (b) local health boards to facilitate the sharing of good practice examples to support Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) implementation across Scotland.
Answer
The MAT Implementation Support Team (MIST) was established to work with and support local areas to build improvement-based capacity and capability so that they would be able to implement and sustain the MAT standards locally.
MIST support is provided through networking and regular support visits with a range of stakeholders including ADPs and local Health Boards to facilitate improvement work such as the sharing of good practice. Ministers have commissioned Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) to run a national learning system for implementing the standards which is mainly aimed at providing support to ADPs and Health Boards by sharing best practice.
So, MIST and HIS work together on this to support local areas. The HIS learning system includes networking and webinars as well as providing insights and materials such as case studies, resources and news stories which are shared across ADPs and Health Boards.
Local areas report regularly to Ministers on progress towards implementation of the MAT standards. Public Health Scotland publishes progress in an annual National Benchmarking Report each June based on the work of MIST, and in the second annual Report published in June this year included good practice case studies provided through the HIS learning system.
MIST are also holding thematic groups for each of the standards to bring stakeholders together, and there is a planned in person work shop for MAT Standard 3 – Assertive Outreach taking place in the Autumn.