Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government maintains an interest in any relevant policy development in Europe and beyond. We have read the recent decision in the Netherlands with interest and note the reasons for this Exchange Principle as offering the opportunity to reduce the potential environmental impact in urban areas, reduce the impact on nature and improve the landscape. The development of Scotland''s electricity infrastructure is a matter for Scottish ministers.

The Scottish Coronary Revascularisation Register (SCRR) has monitored Scottish coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) outcomes since 1996. Its data are thought to be more accurate than those of the European Association for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery, on which the Question is based. According to the SCRR, CABG inpatient mortality in Scotland between 2006 and 2008 was 1.6%.

When making comparisons between countries it is important to bear in mind factors such as the variation between definitions used in monitoring performance, patient profiling and patient selection. Severity of disease, co-morbidities and age are also important factors in patient selection and can affect clinical outcomes.

When comparing SCRR reports over time and between countries, Scotland has demonstrated ongoing improvement and clinical outcomes very much in line with the rest of the UK and Europe.

The Scottish Government has not commissioned any health technology assessments on commercially available predictive genetic tests.

NHSScotland is monitoring the development of cloud services but has no current plans to let national contracts for cloud-based services at this time.

Although it operates UK-wide the National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death reports do not normally cover Scotland as such work is undertaken by the Scottish Audit of Surgical Mortality. This report covers England, Wales and Northern Ireland. However, we will consider any relevant learning for NHSScotland.

The provision of acute pain services by the NHS in Scotland has been the subject of reviews by NHS Quality Improvement Scotland, against the clinical standards for anaesthesia. The most recent of these was published in September 2010 and found that the delivery of acute pain services had improved from the previous review in 2005, albeit with scope for further improvement.

NHS boards are expected to have due regard to these findings in order to improve the quality of the service they provide. This reflects the ambitions in the Healthcare Quality Strategy for NHSScotland of safe, effective and person-centred care for every patient.

Information on staff within NHSScotland is held by Information Services Division (ISD) which collects a variety of information on staff in post across all NHS staff groups, including vacancy information. This data is published online by ISD as at 30 September each year.

The report makes clear that obstructive sleep apnoea/hypopnoea syndrome is a significant public health issue. In view of the link between the condition and obesity, it would be helpful for the report to be read in conjunction with our Obesity Roadmap, in order to tackle the increase in referrals highlighted in the report.

The specific information requested is not available centrally.

Tackling health inequalities remains a priority for the Scottish Government and features prominently in a range of initiatives and activities that impact on both primary and secondary care services. The Keep Well and Well North initiatives, which have primarily focussed on GP practices as the main route to deliver targeted health checks, has enabled some 91,000 individual health checks, and are being mainstreamed across NHSScotland. In tandem with NHS Education for Scotland, further efforts to boost training places in deprived areas are progressing through expanding health inequality fellowships, and delivering the Childsmile programme in dentistry.

The Scottish Government has made significant resources available to NHS boards, £250 million over the three years to 2010-11, to deliver the challenging 18 weeks referral to treatment time target by the end of this year.

To ensure delivery of the target the Health Delivery Improvement and Support Team are working with all boards to redesign and transform services and ensure that good practice is shared across the whole of NHS Scotland.