Current status: Answered by Neil Gray on 20 February 2024
To ask the Scottish Government how its reported two-year freeze in capital expenditure for the NHS will impact on its NHS Recovery Plan target of achieving 40,000 additional inpatient and day cases seen in National Treatment Centres by 2025-26.
The National Treatment Centres (NTCs) Programme is the single biggest increase in planned care capacity ever created in NHS Scotland. Five new National Treatment Centres (NTCs) will be opened by 2024 at Golden Jubilee (Phase 1 and 2), NTC Fife, NTC Highland and NTC Forth Valley. Combined these centres will have eight orthopaedic theatres; an inpatient/day-case ward; three endoscopy rooms and two general theatres.
As a result of the almost 10% cut in our capital budget from the UK Government, we are having to revise our pipeline of infrastructure investment and we do not expect National Treatment Centres in Ayrshire and Arran, Grampian, Lanarkshire, Lothian and Tayside to be progressed in the short to medium term. The figure of 40,000 additional activities from the 2021 recovery plan is dependent on all National Treatment Centres in development being operational, therefore we expect the additional annual activity from the programme to be 20,000 from 2024-25.