Chamber and committees

Three Rapid Cancer Diagnostic Services (RCDS) – formerly known as Early Cancer Diagnostic Centres (ECDC) – have been opened in NHS Ayrshire and Arran, NHS Dumfries and Galloway and NHS Fife. An interim report on the rollout of RCDC's is expected shortly and are actively considering further rollout of Rapid Cancer Diagnostic Services.

All Boards have recruited both medical and non-medical staff to manage the new referral pathway for patients with non-specific symptoms, including navigators who support patients from the point of referral.

Recruitment for clinical services is the responsibility of individual Boards and it is therefore for them to provide specific details.

The University of Strathclyde has been commissioned to undertake critical evaluation of early adopter sites to inform wider roll-out, ensuring learnings from the first three Services are embedded, working towards equitable access across NHS Scotland, as set out in the NHS Recovery Plan.

In the meantime, officials are working with Boards to open additional early adopter sites.

Recruitment will be undertaken by the host Board, and will be dependent on their locally agreed pathway and resourcing requirements.

The Scottish Government is committed to the recruitment of a minimum of 1,500 additional staff to support the operation of Scotland’s National Treatment Centres (NTCs) and is supporting a range of activity to achieve this.

The recruitment data we collate is management information and not suitable for publication. NTC Recruitment is the responsibility of each NHS Board. It is therefore for NHS Golden Jubilee to provide detail regarding their recruitment.

The Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) is a partner in a UK-wide multi-agency RAPID C-19 initiative, which is a collaborative partnership between the SMC and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). Building on this work, the SMC is exploring the potential for collaboration with NICE on a single technology assessment (STA) of tixagevimab–cilgavimab (Evusheld ® ) for the prevention of COVID-19.

As part of the Scottish Medicines Consortium’s (SMC) continuing role in the UK-wide multi-agency RAPID C-19 initiative, the collaborative partnership between the SMC and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) will extend to the multiple technology assessment (MTA) of the range of therapeutics for the treatment of COVID-19; therefore, a separate assessment of these medicines by the SMC will not be required.

Three Rapid Cancer Diagnostic Services (RCDS), formerly known as Early Cancer Diagnostic Centres (ECDC), have been established in NHS Scotland, and we are committed to ensuring equitable access across the country.

RCDS’s provide primary care with a new referral route for patients with non-specific symptoms suspicious of cancer (i.e. weight loss, fatigue, nausea), which can often be a sign of blood cancer. The Clinical Leads for two of the Services are Haematologists, reflecting the role that this new model can play in diagnosing blood cancers earlier.

Our NHS Recovery Plan commits to providing greater public awareness of signs and symptoms of cancer, with a new national campaign in development and website being re-designed.

The Scottish Government will continue to work closely with primary care clinicians, including the Scottish Primary Care Cancer Group, to identify possible symptoms as early as possible and support appropriate referral via the Scottish Referral Guidelines for Suspected Cancer.

Scottish Government officials are meeting with NHS Education Scotland on 27 September to explore primary care cancer education. This follows the recent cessation of Cancer Research UK’s Clinical Engagement Team that played a key role in delivering cancer education across NHS Scotland in recent years.

The questions used in the next Scottish Cancer Patient Experience Survey will be relevant to all cancer patients including those with blood cancer. The data collected will be broken down by cancer type and published as it has been in previous years.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-10433 on 20 September 2022. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers.

The Scottish Stroke Improvement Programme report, published on 28 June, includes data from the Scottish Stroke Care Audit (SSCA). The SSCA measures quality of care of stroke services in each acute hospital, grouped by NHS board against the Scottish Stroke Care Standards.