Chamber and committees

The Scottish Executive has no plans to issue guidance for care staff working with people withmultiple sclerosis.

The Scottish Social ServicesCouncil is the regulatory body for the social care sector, and setsqualifications criteria for registration. Registration of social care staff isbeing phased. Care staff working in adult residential settings will beregistered in phase two, which is due to begin from April 2006.

I look to NHS boards to planand provide bone density scanning services in accordance with their assessmentof local need. Which patients are most likely to benefit from scanning is amatter for the professional judgement of the clinicians involved, takingaccount of the relevant clinical guidelines.

We are funding thedevelopment of a managed care network in Forth Valley for people with MS, which includes standards forservices in primary care and in hospital, endorsed by NHS Quality ImprovementScotland. We wish to see these MS networks developed across Scotland.

NHS boards are responsiblefor planning services in their areas and for securing the staff needed todeliver them.

The Executive remainscommitted to building the capacity of the NHSScotland workforce and under theFacing the Future banner has committed some £10 million to a number of nursinginitiatives over the last two financial years including funding for continuousprofessional development.

As I undertook to do, I haveasked my officials to raise with NHS boards the issue of the provision of specialistMS nurse capacity.

Influenza-likeillness is increasing in Scotland at present, and there is certainly more around than we haveexperienced in the last few years. Estimatesfrom the Scottish InfluenzaSpotter Scheme co-ordinated by the Scottish Centre for Infection andEnvironmental Health now exceed the baseline threshold limit of 50consultations per 100,000 population. At 11 November 2003 the estimate was 99 per 100,000 population across Scotland asa whole. The consultation rate for “normal activity” for seasonal influenzalike illness is defined as between 50 and 600 consultations per 100,000population. As such we are still within the lower part of this range currently.

However, laboratoryanalysis is required to confirm a diagnosis of influenza. Laboratory data as at17 November, by NHS board, are shown in the table below (These respiratoryvirus laboratory data broadly reflect the NHS board areas. They are summationsof the laboratory detections from hospital and community samples. While the GPpractices are immediately attributable to NHS boards, the hospital laboratoriesto which samples are submitted are not necessarily the place of residence of theindividuals from whom the samples were obtained).

NHS Argyll and Clyde	80
NHS Ayrshire and Arran	27
NHS Borders	18
NHS Dumfries and Galloway	41
NHS Fife	30
NHS  Grampian	32
NHS Greater Glasgow	86
NHS Highland	19
NHS Lanarkshire	20
NHS Lothian	26
NHS Tayside	7
Total	386

 

It is notpossible to indicate how many such cases are being treated in hospital ashospital data for this winter are not yet available centrally.

The UK nationalinfluenza laboratory is the only UK laboratory that tests for influenza strain type.Only a select number of the clinical isolates are routinely sent to thislaboratory for strain typing (for example, from patients who have died or fromoutbreaks in defined settings). The only Scottish cases to date in whichinfluenza A Fujian-411-2002-like virus has been identified have been in thethree reported deaths in children.

This information is not heldcentrally.

As part of theimplementation process for the new GMS contract, meetings between the NHSConfederation, UK General Practitioners Committee and officials from the fourUK Health Departments are held on a regular basis. The meeting took place on 17and 18 November.

The new GMS contract is aUK-wide agreed package, which applies, to the UK as a whole. There areelements such as the allocation formula which have been adjusted to reflectparticular needs in Scotland, however this does not detract from the point thatthis is essentially a UK contract.

The review of the NHScomplaints procedure has been completed. We are putting in place the systemsrequired for the new procedure. The results of the consultation exercise on thenew NHS complaints procedure can be seen at www.show.scot.nhs.uk/complaints.

An independent analysis of the consultation responses has been carried out by Scottish Health Feedback.This will be made available shortly along with the Scottish Executive response to it.

A comprehensive review of the junction signing strategy and accident histories on the A90 between Aberdeen andPerth was undertaken in 1999. A number of junctions along the route have beenimproved following this review and further improvement works have been approvedfor 2003-04 between Aberdeen and Stonehaven.

In addition, the Scottish Executive carries out an annual review of the trunk road network to identifyaccident cluster sites or areas with high accident rates. The junctions on theA90 between Aberdeen and the Angus border will be included in this reviewwhich is currently under way. Any relevant sites that can be treated by lowcost engineering methods will be prioritised and added to the 2004-05 remedialprogramme.

The Scottish Executive Health Department published A Framework for Maternity Services inScotland in February 2001. The document sets out a vision for maternityservices in Scotland, and provides a “template” for best practice inmaternity care for use by NHS service planners and the clinical professionalswho are responsible for delivering these services.

The report of the ExpertGroup on Acute Maternity Services published in December 2002 specified therange of services for women and neonates required in midwife-led communitymaternity units dealing with low risk pregnancies and labour and consultant-ledunits caring for women with low, medium or high risk or complex pregnancies andlabour. It highlighted the fact that acute maternity services should be plannedand commissioned in a regional context taking into account local needs.

The Health Department alsoissued a Health Department Letter (HDL (2002) 10) in March 2002 giving guidanceto NHS boards on regional planning for health care services.