Chamber and committees

In its annual report for 2009-10, the Mental Welfare Commission for Scotland notes that compliance with the duty on police officers to notify the commission of any place of safety orders is variable. The commission has indicated that it will look in greater detail at the forms it receives and consider whether good practice guidance on this subject is required.

The annual report is available online at (http://reports.mwcscot.org.uk/annual_monitoring/overview2009-2010/annualreport2009-2010.aspx).

Additionally, the Scottish Government is currently undertaking a piece of work to better understand the use of section 297, and will continue to work with police forces on this matter.

The Information and Statistics Division of NHS National Services Scotland publish regularly data on the number and cost of items provided under the Minor Ailments Service and separately prescribed by GPs.

The list of medicines which may be supplied under the Minor Ailments Scheme is determined by each NHS board for its area and is subject to change.

The proportion of GP consulting time devoted to the prescription of items which are also available under the Minor Ailments Service is not monitored centrally.

The Scottish Government will continue to monitor service usage and develop the Minor Ailments Service as may be appropriate.

The aggregate costs to National Services Scotland Practitioner Services Division for administering prescription charges exemptions and the Minor Ailment Service in 2010-11 were:

Costs associated with payment verification - £88,443

Costs of administering Prescription Pre-payment Certificates and medical exemption certificates - £265,259.

A split of these costs between the administration of prescription charges exemptions and Minor Ailment Service administration is not available.

A decline in commercial clinical trials is being experienced across Europe for a number of reasons, but long delays to trial commencement and poor patient recruitment are frequently cited as areas where the UK lags behind other countries. The Chief Scientist Office (CSO) of the Scottish Government Health Directorates is seeking to maximise the opportunities for Scotland by addressing these barriers through the activities of NHS Research Scotland (NRS).

NRS is a collaboration between CSO and the NHS Boards in Scotland focused on delivering greater efficiency and effectiveness to both commercial and non-commercial clinical trials. Through the work of NRS, we have seen significant reductions in the time taken to start trials in Scotland, and NRS is now working to deliver patient recruitment to target and on time. These improvements have been welcomed by organisations placing trials in Scotland, and the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) has funded workshops in Scotland and England to promote and raise awareness of the NRS offering. In recognition that greater efficiencies can be delivered through collaborative working, NRS also works closely with the ABPI and individual pharmaceutical and clinical research organisations through the NRS Industry Partnership Forum.

As part of the childhood immunisation programme, two doses of MMR vaccine are routinely offered to children by 5 years of age. In Scotland, 30,422 children between the ages of 10 and 16 (8.4% of the 10-16 age group) had not received any doses of MMR vaccine as at 31 March 2011. A further 21,623 children (6.0%) had received one but not both MMR vaccinations offered. These figures are drawn from the Scottish Immunisation Recall System (SIRS), which is used primarily for vaccination in children up to 6 years of age. Vaccinations given to children in the older age group may not always be recorded on the SIRS system and so the true figure of unvaccinated children may be slightly lower.

Health Protection Scotland estimate that 5,254 children between 10 and 16 (1.5% of the 10-16 year old population) are susceptible to measles despite vaccination. This relates to the proportion of children who do not make an adequate response to the vaccine and who are therefore susceptible to measles. It should be noted that susceptibility to measles is different to being 'at risk’ of measles. Being ‘at risk’ includes not just individual susceptibility, but also how susceptible individuals are distributed throughout the population - i.e. evenly spread, such that herd immunity is maintained, or all grouped together in a large population.

The Chief Scientist Office within the Health Directorate is currently funding a pilot study to develop and test a register of pre-consented patients who have agreed to be approached to take part in research. The pilot study is due to complete in August 2011, after which a decision on whether to progress a national register will be made.

Tables showing the percentage change in emergency admissions between 2008-09 and 2009-10 for NHS Boards, Community Health Partnerships and GP practices have been placed in the Scottish Parliament’s Reference Centre (Bib number. 53052).

Statistics per 100 patients identified by Scottish Patients at Risk of Readmission or Admission (SPARRA) have not been produced. This is because SPARRA is run quarterly and the requested statistic would be based on a snapshot reflecting the number of “SPARRA patients” within a locality at a particular point in time within the financial year. The patients on a SPARRA list will change from quarter to quarter and can be impacted by data coverage and quality constraints at the time of list generation. Consequently statistics showing changes in “admissions per 100 SPARRA patients” could be misleading.

Specialist Nurses - Organ Donation, previously known as donor transplant
co-ordinators, are embedded in the large hospitals shown, by NHS Board, in the following table:

Source: NHS Blood & Transplant

The smaller hospitals in Scotland are covered by the Specialist Nurse - Organ Donation from the nearest large hospital.

At present there are many cases of measles across Europe, however the prevalence of measles in Scotland remains very low. There is limited evidence of transmission of measles in Scotland and the few cases that have occurred this year have primarily been seen amongst those in their late teens or early twenties who have not been vaccinated. Health Protection Scotland continues to monitor the situation and provides regular advice to the Scottish Government.

Scottish vaccination uptake rates for MMR are very high, and higher than in other parts of the UK. The Scottish Government recognises the very good level of protection provided by MMR vaccine and very much supports all efforts to increase vaccination rates across Europe. Anybody in Scotland who has not received the full course of MMR vaccinations can receive the vaccine from their GP.

Patients inappropriately delayed in hospital for less than 6 weeks are classified as delayed discharges and information on these delays is included in the published quarterly census. The total figure has fallen by more than 2,000 in the last 10 years.

The recent focus, following the setting of the zero target by the then administration in 2006, has been on the over 6 weeks delays. This zero target was achieved for the first time ever in April 2008.

I made it clear in my Parliamentary statement on delayed discharge on 10 February that I thought this 6 week discharge period should be reduced and we continue to work with our partners in the NHS and local government to achieve this. This is one of the key improvements we are looking for following the introduction this year of the £70m Change Fund.