Chamber and committees

The information requested is not centrally available.

The Scottish Government is working with NHS boards and other stakeholders to gather data on IVF waiting times, which will be used to inform our options to improve equity of access to infertility treatment in Scotland.

The Scottish Government has set a new HEAT target for NHS boards to achieve agreed completion rates for child healthy weight intervention programmes by 2011. Over the next three years the Scottish Government will provide £6 million across all boards to support the establishment of and access to these programmes. We expect 20,000 overweight and obese children between the ages of five and 15 to benefit from these interventions over next three years.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that patients have rapid access to the full range of services they need from the NHS. We will continue to look at other services which can be brought within the 18 weeks referral to treatment target, and we have already announced that audiology services will be included. Meantime, we are supporting the NHS in Scotland to improve access to services not presently covered by waiting times targets.

Information is not routinely collected nationally on patients waiting times and numbers for physiotherapy treatment.

Coeliac disease is not one of the conditions that confer exemption from prescription charges. To be exempt from prescription charges on medical grounds, a person must suffer from one of the chronic medical conditions stipulated in the National Health Service (Charges for Drugs and Appliances) (Scotland) Regulations.

People who suffer from coeliac disease, and who are prescribed gluten-free food, can benefit from buying prescription pre-payment certificates (PPCs), which entitle holders to free prescriptions while the PPC is valid. The price of PPCs was cut by 51% in April 2008. A 12 month PPC now costs £48 and a four month PPC costs £17. Further reductions are planned over the next two years, with the intention that prescriptions will be free from April 2011, including those for gluten free food.

The Keep Well programme has begun health checks in deprived communities within the Lanarkshire, Lothian, Tayside and Greater Glasgow and Clyde NHS board areas. Further checks have will shortly begin in deprived communities in Fife, Ayrshire and Arran, Grampian and additional areas of Greater Glasgow and Clyde NHS board areas.

A further programme Well North, similar to Keep Well but focused on addressing poor health among people most at risk in remote and rural Scotland, will begin shortly in Grampian, Highland, Orkney, Shetland and Western Isles board areas.

The best practice identified by Keep Well and Well North is being disseminated widely in order to shape future anticipatory care approaches across Scotland.

NHS boards do not hold lists of dispensing opticians and therefore do not have the information to publish.

GP practices are paid through the quality outcomes framework for compiling and maintaining a register of adult patients with a BMI of 30 or more. Treating obesity is part of the management of other conditions such as CHD, diabetes and hypertension.

A specialist enhanced service for childhood obesity is provided in the Scottish Enhanced Services Programme for primary and community care.

Participating GP practices in Keep Well in Lothian, Lanarkshire and Tayside have also signed up to the Counterweight Programme. This programme has been designed to manage obesity in adults in a primary care setting. Counterweight will be extended to Fife, Grampian and Ayrshire and Arran in April 2008 with talks on-going for the programme to go Scotland-wide later this year.

Almost £25 million has been made available to NHS boards in 2008-09 specifically for tackling alcohol misuse. We have made it clear that first call on this funding is to implement screening for alcohol misuse and delivery of brief interventions where appropriate, in line with a new NHS target. Priority areas are primary care, emergency departments and antenatal care.

The Scottish Government recognises the importance of promoting the health of those working in the public sector and the benefits for both the wellbeing of the individual and for improved efficiency and productivity for the employer.

One hundred and forty-one NHS organisations and 28 local authorities already hold a Healthy Working Lives award or the predecessor Scotland''s health at work (SHAW) award. The Scottish Government is currently working towards acquiring the gold healthy working lives award.

The award programme is run by the Scottish Centre for Healthy Working Lives and is funded by the Scottish Government through NHS Health Scotland. The Centre''s Healthy Working Lives advisers can provide employers with advice on good workplace policies that promote health and wellbeing, such as healthy eating, physical activity, tobacco cessation and mental wellbeing. The centre promotes the uptake of the award scheme widely across the public, private and third sectors.

The Chief Executive of NHSScotland issued a letter to all NHS boards on 20 March 2008 (CEL 14 [2008]) on the role of the acute sector as a health promoting health service. Included in this is a requirement for all NHS board acute services to work towards acquiring a healthy working lives award, or a higher level of award where one is already held, as soon as possible.

The Better Health, Better Care: Action Plan also sets out the Scottish Government''s commitment to ensuring safe and health-promoting environments, and to ensuring that all NHS boards, both as employers and as service providers, adopt existing good practice in working with community planning partners and employability services to enable people to work in a health promoting environment, retain work if ill, or return to work from illness or injury.