Chamber and committees

Netcare announced earlier this year that it did not intend to seek to renew the existing contract after it ends in January 2010. The question of public consultation about the contract with Netcare is therefore academic.

The arrangement with Netcare was a pilot project with a time-limited lifespan. There is no doubt that the pilot has helped to reduce waiting times for treatment in a range of specialities in NHS Tayside, Fife and Grampian. We therefore need to retain the positive elements of the project. I have made it very clear that I believe the best way of doing so is to continue the service at Stracathro under the NHS. That is why we will be investing £5 million a year to make that happen from January.

No single organisation has sole responsibility for this matter as it straddles the remit of a number of organisations working in areas such as public health, accident and emergency services, policing and anti-social behaviour. As such, this matter is best addressed as the collective responsibility of partnerships involving all relevant bodies.

The Scottish Government funded and published on 10 November 2009, a research report on Managing the Needs of Drunk and Incapable People in Scotland: A Literature Review and Needs Assessment. The report and associated documents are available at the links below.

Following publication of the research, a Chief Executives Letter (CEL 44/2009) signed by Kevin Woods (Director General Health and Chief Executive, NHS Scotland) and George Graham (Association of Chief Police Officers), was issued on 17 November. This asked alcohol and drug partnerships to ensure the needs of people who are drunk and incapable are included in local needs assessments when reviewing their service provision, and to ensure there are clear and effective partnership-based strategies in place to manage the needs of this vulnerable population and mitigate the impact they have on their communities.

On 23 November, the Scottish Government also held a research dissemination event which included stakeholders from alcohol and drug partnerships, police, local authorities, Scottish Ambulance Service, community health partnerships, social work services, community safety partnerships, crown office and third sector service providers.

Copies of the research report are available at:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2009/10/29154403/0.

A review of the literature is available at:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2009/10/29154320/0.

A summary of findings and recommendations is available at:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2009/10/29154234/0.

The Chief Scientist Office (CSO) within the Scottish Government has responsibility for encouraging and supporting research into health and healthcare needs in Scotland. CSO supports projects of a sufficiently high standard initiated by the research community in Scotland. This role is well known and advertised throughout the healthcare and academic community.

CSO is currently funding one research project on pancreatic cancer. CSO would welcome further research proposals in this area which would be subject to the usual peer and committee review.

There are nine clinical trials on pancreatic cancer taking place in the UK, two of which are actively recruiting patients at Scottish sites.

Information is available from the drug treatment waiting times framework on the number of clients waiting to be offered an appointment date for drug treatment at a specialised drugs service. Information on drug treatment waiting times is collected by alcohol and drug action teams (ADATs) and submitted quarterly to ISD. The most up to date published data is for the quarter 1 April 2009 to 30 June 2009.

The following table provides information on the number of clients waiting to be offered an appointment date for their first treatment by NHS health board of treatment.

Clients Waiting to be Offered a Treatment Date for First Intervention by NHS Health Board of Treatment as at 30 June 2009

NHS Health Board Of Treatment	Number Waiting
Ayrshire and Arran	27
Borders	15
Dumfries and Galloway	12
Fife	8
Forth Valley	60
Grampian	31
Greater Glasgow and Clyde	52
Highland	30
Lanarkshire	11
Lothian	179
Orkney	0
Shetland	*
Tayside	28
Western Isles	*
Scotland Total	458

Source: Drug Treatment Waiting Times Information Framework.

Notes:

*Indicates values that have been suppressed due to potential risk of disclosure.

Interventions include structured preparatory intervention, prescribed drug treatment, community based support and rehabilitation and residential rehabilitation and detoxification.

The Scotland figure is an aggregate of the information provided from ADATs. It should be noted that the number of services submitting data varies significantly from area to area across the data collection period.

The quality and completeness of drug treatment data varies between health boards and caution is recommended when interpreting these figures.

Information is not held centrally on the number of people currently on waiting lists for treatment of alcohol addiction. The Scottish Alcohol Needs Assessment report, published by the Scottish Association of Alcohol and Drug Action Teams in August 2009, estimated that approximately 17,000 people accessed alcohol treatment services in 2006-07. The average waiting time for treatment access was 3.5 weeks (3.3 and 3.8 weeks for community and residential agencies respectively). Information on the number of people accessing treatment and waiting times is not available at individual health board level.

Practitioners of herbalism and traditional Chinese medicine are already able to use licensed herbal medicines and this will continue. They are also able to use certain unlicensed herbal medicines currently exempted from various licensing requirements through the Medicines Act 1968, but European legislation may impact on this after 2011. This was highlighted as a factor for consideration in a joint public consultation by all four UK countries on whether, and if so, how, practitioners of herbalism, traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture should be regulated. That consultation closed on 16 November 2009. Over 4,000 responses were received and are to be analysed to inform future decisions.

Officials from the Scottish Government Health Directorates (SGHD) and NHS QIS have met representatives from the National Association for Colitis and Crohn''s Disease (NACC) to discuss how the standards produced by the Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) Standards Group might be taken forward in Scotland.

SGHD officials have suggested that an effective approach would be the development of IBD managed clinical networks (MCN), with the standards forming part of the network''s evidence base. That approach would also help promote the audit of IBD services, building on the UK-wide audits already undertaken in 2006 and 2008. We understand that the MCN approach is now being considered by a group of gastroenterologists.

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The defined daily dose per capita of antidepressants (percentage change) since 2006 is shown in the following table:

Year Ending	Scotland % change
30-06-2006	2.08%
30-09-2006	2.86%
31-12-2006	4.22%
31-03-2007	4.38%
30-06-2007	5.16%
30-09-2007	6.08%
31-12-2007	6.04%
31-03-2008	5.50%
30-06-2008	4.80%
30-09-2008	4.18%
31-12-2008	4.06%
31-03-2009	4.13%
30-06-2009	5.21%

The table shows that in 2008 the percentage change was on the decrease. However the last quarter showed a slight rise.

Information regarding the number of people on antidepressants is not currently collected, so we do not know whether the number of people taking antidepressants has increased. The table shows the amount of antidepressants prescribed, so increases can be attributable to the same number of people staying on an antidepressant for longer or the same number of people receiving a higher dose.

The Mental Health Collaborative continues to work with NHS boards to support the development and implementation of action plans to improve evidence-based prescribing of DDDs.

Free personal and nursing care is an entitlement for those who are assessed by a local authority as having personal or nursing care needs that call for the provision of services. Payments for personal and nursing care will only commence once an appropriate contract is in place between the local authority and the care provider.

Joint guidance by the Scottish Government and COSLA was issued to local authorities on 28 September 2009. The guidance delivers a commitment to provide personal and nursing care services to older people within a maximum period of six weeks following the identification of need, where an individual is identified as being at critical or substantial risk as regards their independent living or wellbeing, and applies across Scotland.

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The Scottish Government is more than midway through a four-year term and we are working through our manifesto commitments, having already delivered a significant number of measures to make Scotland wealthier, safer, healthier, smarter and greener.

There are already over 65% of local authorities that provide a mixture of free and discounted swimming to targeted groups, and it is hoped that the remaining local authorities will recognise the benefits that free access to swimming pools can bring to achieving their local outcomes.

We will continue to work with local authorities, Scottish Swimming, sportscotland and others to ensure we offer more and better opportunities for our young people to enjoy and benefit from swimming. Our investment of over £1.2 million in Scottish Swimming earlier this year, the biggest ever single investment in a Scottish governing body of sport, shows our commitment to swimming in Scotland.

Data on recruitment are not held centrally. Data on the number of staff employed by the NHS at 30 September each year are published by National Services Scotland, Information Services Division (ISD) Scotland and are available from the website link:

http://www.isdscotland.org/isd/796.html.

Information as at 30 September 2009 will be published on 15 December 2009.

I refer the member to the answer to question S3W-23085 on 29 April 2009. It gave the number of school nurses employed in 2007 and 2008. All the 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.