Chamber and committees

This is an operational matter for the Care Commission under the regulatory framework set out in the Regulation of Care (Scotland) Act 2001, and its associated regulations. The information requested is not held centrally.

You can contact the Chief Executive of the Commission at the following address:

Ms Jacquie Roberts

Chief Executive

Scottish Commission for the Regulation of Care

Compass House

11 Riverside Drive

Dundee

DD1 4NY

E-mail: [email protected].

General dental practitioners working in private practice are delivering private dentistry rather than NHS dentistry. This is not analogous to commercial companies providing NHS primary medical services.

Most independent general dental practitioners currently undertake a mix of NHS and private dentistry, and we have no plans to legislate to change that.

The Scottish Ambulance Service has been running programmes to improve the wellbeing of its workforce and control sickness absence for a number of years. These include a range of working well initiatives together with stringent application of the management of sickness absence policy and procedures, linked to close monitoring and reporting of sickness absence and its reasons. The service also benefits from the initiatives at national level to promote and share good practice in promoting attendance and managing sickness absence.

The service recorded a rate of 5.2% for the month of June 2008, this is a significant reduction on their June 2007 figure which was 6%.

I refer the member to the answer to question S3W-15000 on 29 July 2008. 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/webapp/wa.search.

Inspection of registered care services is an operational matter for the Care Commission within the requirements of the Regulation of Care (Scotland) Act 2001 (the Act). The information requested is not held centrally.

The Care Commission is required, under Section 25 of the act, to inspect care home services, including care homes for older people, at least twice yearly. One of these inspections must be unannounced.

The member can contact the chief executive of the commission at the following address:

Ms Jacquie Roberts

Chief Executive

Scottish Commission for the Regulation of Care

Compass House

11 Riverside Drive

Dundee

DD1 4NY

Email: [email protected].

I refer the member to the answer to question S3W-15956 on 9 September 2008. 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/webapp/wa.search.

I refer the member to the answer to question S3W-15956 on 9 September 2008. 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/webapp/wa.search.

Community Health Partnerships were established to enable the delivery of better services for local people and to help to improve the health of local communities. Patient benefits have been delivered by Community Health Partnerships (CHPs) including better management of long-term conditions; more local diagnosis and treatment; improved access to primary care services and improvements in health through anticipatory care programmes targeted at disadvantaged groups.

These benefits are measured through NHS board HEAT targets and other strategic priorities such as the Mental Health Delivery Plan and community care outcomes.

In relation to costs, the 40 CHPs replaced 81 Local Health Care Cooperatives and were established from the budgets previously used to support LHCCs and NHS trusts which were dissolved. There was no additional funding provided for the establishment or running costs of CHPs.

We will be commissioning a study of CHPs at the end of the year to consider their overall progress in delivering key areas of responsibility and to identify the factors that have facilitated their progress with a view to sharing the learning across all CHPs.

In relation to the costs of the new contracts it should be noted that costings were produced around the additional finance required for these new initiatives when they were introduced, and are detailed below. Now that these new terms and conditions have been agreed and are in place, the focus has moved to securing available benefits for the service and for patients and, as such, on-going work on additional costs has not been undertaken.

New Consultant Contract: The estimated additional cost to NHSScotland over the two year period 1 April 2003 to 31 March 2005 is £125.6 million.

New GP contract (known as General Medical Services (GMS) contract): The total expenditure on the GMS contract increased from £503.9 million in 2003-04 to £696 million in 2005-06 which was the first year in which the new contract was fully in place.

Agenda for Change: The estimated additional costs are £145 million in 2004-05, £215 million in 2005-06, £161 million in 2006-07 and £113 million in 2007-08.

All of these additional costs are considered to be affordable within the overall funding provided to boards during this period and all boards have managed to contain their expenditure within the funding allocated to them in this period.

As regards benefits, HDL(2005)28 set out the requirements for NHS boards to develop Pay Modernisation Benefits Realisation planning to demonstrate how they are using the new NHS contractual arrangements to deliver improvements in services for patients and to meet national targets and support local service redesign.

By modernising terms and conditions all three strands ensure that the NHS is well equipped to recruit and retain the staff it needs, not just in terms of fair remuneration but also through policies that allow staff to maintain the appropriate work life balance.

Changes in pay, terms and conditions do not in themselves effect improvements in patient care. The new contracts do however contain a series of provisions which can act as catalysts, as drivers for change, giving boards levers and tools that they can use to effect service re-design and improvement.

The Scottish Government will continue to work with the service to ensure that boards take full advantage of the opportunities which these new terms and conditions packages present to develop benefits for patients.

The responses to the consultation that informed the development of the Health Boards (Membership and Elections) (Scotland) Bill revealed a widespread concern about the need to re-establish public confidence in the decision-making of health boards.

The government believes that direct elections will help to address these concerns, providing an opportunity for local people and their representatives to both influence, and take accountability for, decisions made in respect of the local health care services that they fund as taxpayers. This is fully consistent with the government''s commitment to create a co-owned, mutual NHS.