Chamber and committees

NHS Lothian along with all other NHS boards have an agreed financial plan to deliver a balanced financial position for the current financial year. The board fully recognise the statutory requirement to deliver a balanced financial plan for the year. Work is continuing within the board to identify options for managing expenditure and the Scottish Government are engaged with NHS Lothian and will work closely with them, providing support as required.

I refer the member to the answer to question S4W-23868 on 20 January 2015. 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/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx.

All patients categorised as ‘code 9’ are included on the delayed discharge data recording system, and are published in the quarterly delayed discharge census available at:

http://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Health-and-Social-Community-Care/Delayed-Discharges/Previous-Publications/.

Data on the number of patients accessing a stroke unit on the day of admission is published annually in the Scottish Stroke Care Audit (SSCA). Boards are also able to access their own real time data, and the SSCA team provides them with monthly and quarterly reports.

The Scottish Stroke Improvement Team supports Managed Clinical Networks (MCNs) to evaluate board performance, identify areas of concern and work with them to implement local action plans to improve the delivery of stroke care across Scotland. This support includes visiting all boards at least once per year to review stroke care with board representatives (board management and clinical teams), to assess performance, to highlight achievements and good practice and to formulate an improvement plan for areas of concern where necessary.

The Scottish Stroke Improvement Team met with board representatives from NHS Forth Valley on 16 December 2014, a follow up meeting to review progress will be arranged for May 2015.

This level of detailed information is not held centrally.

We have invested over £29 million this year (2014-15) to support the NHS and help boards cope with the added pressures they are experiencing as well as manage winter pressures.

We have invested £9.5 million through our National Unscheduled Care Action Plan. This was allocated to all boards, including the Scottish Ambulance Service and NHS 24. The allocation to each board was determined by using the NHSScotland Resource Allocation Committee (NRAC) formula.

We have invested £10 million to support improvements in relation to delayed discharges, whilst minimising potential disruption to services, patients and carers over the winter period. Some of this funding was allocated to boards on a NRAC basis and the remainder was determined by assessing the level of delayed discharge.

In December 2014 we announced a further £10 million investment to support winter resilience by increasing capacity during winter months and help stop patients being admitted to or delayed in hospital unnecessarily, easing the impact of pressure on both scheduled and unscheduled care. The allocation of this funding will be determined by a number of factors including, NRAC, level of local pressures, delayed discharge and elective cancellations/pressures.

NHS boards have also invested around £20 million to support improvements in unscheduled care and winter resilience. This is a combined investment from central and local funding to of £50 million.

A period of sedation is a common and integrated part of the package of care for people requiring treatment in intensive care units.

Patients are intensively monitored whilst in the intensive care unit 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Monitoring continues following discharge from intensive care units using nursing and medical observation and physiological monitoring and is tailored to the persons individual needs at any given time.

The Scottish Government’s eHealth Division monitors information security via its annual and mid-year eHealth business reviews of boards and via ongoing relationships with board information governance and security leads. There is no formal Scottish Government inspection of information security, but this area is considered by Audit Scotland in its rolling programme of audits and boards also employ external auditors as and when required. Subsequent to a new process introduced in August 2014 all significant information security incidents are reported to the Scottish Government and lessons learned reports are produced when required.

The postcode is included to identify the local authority of residence of the patient.

The following table shows the number of standard delayed discharge patients in Scotland recorded within a mental health specialty in each quarterly delayed discharge census from January 2012 until October 2014. These are patients who have met the criteria as laid out in section 2.1 of the Delayed Discharges Definitions and Data Recording Manual.

The anonymity of patients is not compromised by the recording of patient postcode and Community Health Index number. As part of information governance, Information Services Division Scotland follows strict confidentiality, security and disclosure protocol guidelines.