Chamber and committees

Questions and answers

Parliamentary questions can be asked by any MSP to the Scottish Government or the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. The questions provide a means for MSPs to get factual and statistical information.

Written questions must be answered within 10 working days (20 working days during recess)
Other questions such as Topical, Portfolio, General and First Minister's Question Times are taken in the Chamber

Urgent Questions aren't included in the Question and Answers search. There is a SPICe fact sheet listing Urgent and emergency questions.

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Question reference: S3W-35290

Asked by: Helen Eadie, MSP for Dunfermline East, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 13 July 2010
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 5 August 2010

To ask the Scottish Executive whether responsibility to provide ambulances to return patients from hospital to their homes lies with the ambulance service nearest to where the hospital is located or where the patient lives.

While the Scottish Ambulance Service is structured into operating divisions for management purposes it is a national Special Health Board that serves all of Scotland. Where a patient requires transport to return from hospital it can be in a vehicle usually based in the patient''s own locality or a vehicle from elsewhere. This depends on the scheduling and availability of the required, and most appropriate, resource.

Question reference: S3W-35282

Asked by: Helen Eadie, MSP for Dunfermline East, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 13 July 2010
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 5 August 2010

To ask the Scottish Executive whether it will list the vacancy (a) rates and (b) numbers for ambulance staff in the Scottish Ambulance Service, broken down by grade and Regional Operational Division in each of the last six years.

Question reference: S3W-35285

Asked by: Helen Eadie, MSP for Dunfermline East, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 13 July 2010
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 5 August 2010

To ask the Scottish Executive how many hoax calls the Scottish Ambulance Service received in the last 12 months for which figures are available, broken down by Regional Operational Division.

Question reference: S3W-35286

Asked by: Helen Eadie, MSP for Dunfermline East, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 13 July 2010
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 5 August 2010

To ask the Scottish Executive what the estimated maximum number of casualties the East Central Regional Operational Division of the Scottish Ambulance Service could cope with in one incident is; what assessment it has made of additional resources that might be required to meet any major incident, and where those resources would come from.

Question reference: S3W-35289

Asked by: Helen Eadie, MSP for Dunfermline East, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 13 July 2010
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 5 August 2010

To ask the Scottish Executive what the average time taken for the East Central Regional Operational Division of the Scottish Ambulance Service to respond to calls for the latest year was for which figures are available, and what the equivalent figures were for the previous three years.

The information requested is not held in the format sought, however I refer the member to the answer to question S3W-34252 on 10 June 2010 and to the answer to question S3W-29061 on 1 December 2009 which provide details of average response times broken down by territorial board area.

All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament''s website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/Apps2/Business/PQA/Default.aspx.

Question reference: S3W-35283

Asked by: Helen Eadie, MSP for Dunfermline East, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 13 July 2010
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 5 August 2010

To ask the Scottish Executivehow many ambulance staff have been employed by the Scottish Ambulance Service, broken down by grade and Regional Operational Division in each of the last six years.

NHS Workforce data is published by National Services Scotland, Information Services Division (ISD) Scotland annually, as at 30 September. Data on ambulance staff in post for 2007-09 can be found at:

http://www.isdscotland.org/isd/servlet/FileBuffer?namedFile=All%20other%20staff%202009.xls&pContentDispositionType=attachment.

Select Scottish Ambulance Service from the pull down list.

Prior to 2007 NHS Workforce Information was published based on the Whitley pay structure. For this reason it is not possible to compare the Whitley staff in post information to Agenda for Change bandings (post 2007).

Headcount figures for ambulance staff (excluding Ambulance and control officers) from 1996-2006 can be found at:

http://www.isdscotland.org/isd/servlet/FileBuffer?namedFile=WFF02_HB_REG.xls&pContentDispositionType=attachment.

Whole-time equivalent figures for the same period can be found at:

http://www.isdscotland.org/isd/servlet/FileBuffer?namedFile=WFF01_HB_REG.xls&pContentDispositionType=attachment.

Information on headcount of Ambulance and Control Officers for the years 1999 to 2006 is available at:

http://www.isdscotland.org/isd/servlet/FileBuffer?namedFile=WFG02_HB_REG.xls&pContentDispositionType=attachment.

Whole-time equivalent information for the same period is available at:

http://www.isdscotland.org/isd/servlet/FileBuffer?namedFile=WFG01_HB_REG.xls&pContentDispositionType=attachment.

Workforce data for Scottish Ambulance Service for 2006 is not shown in the above links due to discrepancies.

Question reference: S3W-35284

Asked by: Helen Eadie, MSP for Dunfermline East, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 13 July 2010
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 5 August 2010

To ask the Scottish Executive how many 999 calls were made between 20 December 2007 and 1 January 2010 where it was decided that an ambulance was not necessary; and what proportion of calls over this period these represented, broken down by Regional Operational Division.

Question reference: S3W-35287

Asked by: Helen Eadie, MSP for Dunfermline East, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 13 July 2010
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 26 July 2010

To ask the Scottish Executive what the average number of attendances was per year in district general hospital accident and emergency departments in (a) Queen Margaret Hospital, Dunfermline (b) Victoria Hospital Kirkcaldy and (c) St. Andrews Hospital in each of the last six years.

The numbers of accident and emergency attendances (new and return) at Queen Margaret Hospital, Dunfermline, Victoria Hospital, Kirkcaldy and St Andrew''s Memorial Hospital, St Andrews for financial years ending 31 March 2005 to 2010 are presented in the table below.

A&E Attendances¹; Financial Years Ending 31 March 2005 to 2010

	Victoria Hospital, Kirkcaldy	St Andrews Memorial Hospital, St Andrews	Queen Margaret Hospital, Dunfermline
2004-05	41,076	4,817	39,360
2005-06	41,479	4,933	39,484
2006-07	44,762	4,807	40,977
2007-08	45,577	3,585	41,579
2008-09	43,206	3,246	39,248
2009-10	42,048	3,764	40,300

Source: ISD(S)1 and ISD Accident and Emergency data mart.

Note: 1. includes all new and return attendances, planned and unplanned.

Further data on attendances at Accident and Emergency departments since 1 April 2006 can be found on the ISD website at http://www.isdscotland.org/isd/4024.html.

Question reference: S3W-34876

Asked by: Helen Eadie, MSP for Dunfermline East, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 25 June 2010
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 22 July 2010

To ask the Scottish Executive what assessment it has made of variations in the provision of care for people with rheumatoid arthritis across (a) clinical care teams, (b) hospitals and (c) NHS boards.

In December 2008, NHS Quality Improvement Scotland (NHS QIS) published its report on a Clinical Audit of Care in Rheumatoid Arthritis (CARA), which was undertaken to help implement key recommendations in Scottish Intercollegiate Guideline Network (SIGN) Guideline 48, and to identify any significant variations in the provision of care between individual clinical care teams, hospitals or NHS Boards.

The audit identified important challenges in the delivery of high quality health care of patients with newly diagnosed rheumatoid arthritis relating to delays in access to specialist medical and Allied Health Professional care and drug therapy and to developing patient-centred outcomes. It made recommendations for further audit, and these are being taken forward by the Scottish Society for Rheumatology''s
web-based audit programme, supported by NHS QIS.

Both the audit and the revised Guideline on RA are intended to help address variations in provision of care across Scotland.

Question reference: S3W-34877

Asked by: Helen Eadie, MSP for Dunfermline East, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 25 June 2010
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 21 July 2010

To ask the Scottish Executive what plans it has for a rheumatoid arthritis strategy for Scotland.

Our national strategies relate to the clinical priorities of NHSScotland, as set out in Better Health, Better Care, and the Government has no plans to expand these.

However, the Government recognises rheumatoid arthritis (RA) as a serious condition which profoundly affects the lives of many people in Scotland. A wide range of work is therefore in hand to address it, including:

The exploration of a Managed Clinical Network approach to RA services;

The revision of Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN) Guideline 48 and the associated implementation programme being developed by NHS QIS;

The commissioning of the Scottish Public Health Network to undertake an update of the needs assessment for RA published by the Scottish Needs Assessment Programme in 2002;

Consideration of the approach to the management of RA that has been developed in the East of England;

Our general work on developing a musculo-skeletal programme based on integrated multi-disciplinary teams within community settings, incorporating the service model for pain management services that we are also developing; and

The work of the Orthopaedics Task & Finish group set up as part of the 18 weeks referral to treatment programme.

People living with RA will also benefit from our generic work on long-term conditions, including in particular our work on promoting self management.