Our budget for next year includes a record figure of almost £22.5 billion for health and social care. We will scale up productivity and efficiency programmes to create additional capacity and health boards will take forward a new collaborative subnational planning approach - working together to optimise capacity for all specialities and diagnostic tests, including echocardiogram, so that patients receive the care that they need as soon as possible.

Last year our Scottish Cardiac Audit Programme (SCAP) published cardiology diagnostic data, including waiting times statistics, for the first time. This is an important step forward to support monitoring and improvement of echocardiograph services in Scotland.

Data on echocardiography will be incorporated into future SCAP reports. Monitoring of performance through SCAP allows us to identify where challenges are being faced in the delivery of high quality cardiac care and work closely with clinical and operational teams to address issues. Health Boards are also expected to identify issues and work to improve performance locally.