Chamber and committees

PHS publish waiting times data on a quarterly basis. The next publication covering the period to March 2023 will be published on 30 May 2023.

We remain committed to increasing capacity to support recovery, including providing additional endoscopies. To support this we have put in place four mobile endoscopy units, which are providing five to six endoscopy rooms across NHS Scotland. A Dyce facility continues to provide additional endoscopy for NHS Grampian and a new endoscopy room is due to open in NHS Ayrshire and Arran on 1 May 2023.

NTC Golden Jubilee Phase 2 is planned to open in late 2023 bringing additional capacity of five orthopaedic theatres, five endoscopy rooms and two general theatres, and around 9,400 procedures in 2023-24.

We continue to work with Boards on a series of measures to increase diagnostic capacity. Scotland’s world-leading diagnostic bowel service, Colon Capsule Endoscopy (CCE), has supported nearly 3,000 patients since becoming operational in June 2020, including around 2,500 since April 2021.

National qFIT guidance for primary and secondary care was published in May 2022. Where this has been fully implemented, NHS Boards have evidenced a 70% reduction in colonoscopy urgent suspicion of cancer demand. National investigation guidance for iron deficiency anaemia, post-acute diverticulitis and oesophageal varices pathways have also been published and are currently being implemented by Health Boards. The National management guidance for haematuria has also been revised.

Furthermore, an IBD Surveillance Strategy has been developed and is being implemented by Health Boards.

The National Endoscopy Training Programme, launched in 2022, has supported 99 trainee endoscopists for basic courses to date. The programme has also supported 102 independent endoscopists with upskilling, and a further 24 senior trainee endoscopists with training and procedure numbers to support independent endoscopy certification.

There are also currently 222 trainee doctors within NHS Scotland across three training specialities who can perform, or are in training to perform, endoscopy; 32 in Urology, 47 in Gastroenterology and 147 in General Surgery.

I can confirm a surveillance framework was introduced in February 2022 and this framework has been implemented in all Health Boards. The surveillance waiting lists have been re-validated and categorised by diagnosis and risk category. In addition, waiting list triage tools such as qFIT, and endoscopy alternatives such as Cytosponge, and Colon Capsule Endoscopy have been introduced.

Nine additional Urology Practitioners have been recruited to NHS Scotland since the publication of the Endoscopy and Urology Diagnostic Recovery and Renewal Plan.

Seventeen Nurse Endoscopists have been signed off for independent practice since 2021 and we anticipate that a further three new Practitioners will sign off in Spring 2023. This would represent an achievement of 80% against the commitment of 36 Nurse Endoscopists by 2025.

Since November 2021 twenty Nurse (non-medical) Practitioners have completed the course for non-medical endoscopy with a further two due to complete the course in April 2023. There are currently also a further 18 in active training. All non-medical Practitioners who commenced the programme have completed or remain in active training.

I can confirm that this programme was developed and nine Urology Nurse (non-medical) Advanced Practitioners with cystoscopy skills completed the programme in February 2023 and nine are due for completion February 2024.

The number of General Practices located in the most and least deprived areas in Scotland is shown in the following table, based on data published by Public Health Scotland relating to 1 January 2023.

Golden Jubilee Phase 1 opened its doors to patients in December 2020, NTC Fife treated its first patient on 20 March, NTC Highland opened on 17 April of this year, NTC Forth Valley is due to open in summer 2023 with Golden Jubilee Phase 2 due to open in winter 2023.

The Scottish Government receives quarterly financial reporting from IJBs which includes information on the funding received from their Local Government and NHS partners. The reports consolidate information already in the public domain as published by individual IJBs, and are published on the Scottish Government website. This exercise began in 2018 and no data collection was performed by the Scottish Government in respect of IJB funding prior to this.

The funding figures, taken from the IJB reports provided have been collated below. The totals include reported figures from all 30 IJBs and the position in respect of the NHS Highland Lead Agency arrangement. Any information regarding IJB funding prior to 2018-19 can be found in the annual accounts published by individual IJBs.