Chamber and committees

Every member of staff in the NHS, regardless of their specialism, plays a vital part in saving lives in the modern NHS.

Information on expenditure by NHS boards on the specific groups of staff requested is not collected centrally; however, information on the following groups of staff is available:

(Categories of staff are grouped to associate as closely as possible with the appropriate Whitley Council salary scales).

Information on the costs of these groups of staff and the increase between 1999-00 and 2004-05 is given in table 1 of NHS Staff Expenditure 1999-2000 and 2004-05, a copy of which has been placed in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. number 38186).

The staff figures are taken from Scottish Financial Return 15 which were completed by all boards and trusts and returned to the Scottish Executive Health Expenditure with their annual accounts.

Proportion of NHS Budget

It is not possible to identify exactly what each NHS board spends on administrative staff as there is no definition of this with which to collate information. However, expenditure on staff on administration and clerical pay scales has been used as an approximation although this may include staff who might not be considered administrative and conversely may exclude those that are who are paid on a different pay scale, such as senior managers.

Another issue is that the budgets in 1999-2000 and 2004-05 are not directly comparable due to the introduction of resource budgeting in 2002-03. Therefore expenditure on administrative and clerical staff has been expressed as a percentage of total revenue expenditure for the two years in question in the table.

In June this year, I announced a maximum nine-weeks waiting time for eight key diagnostic tests, including MRI, CT, ultrasound and barium scans, from the end of 2007. These standards apply to patients requiring routine scans; patients who need to be seen urgently will continue to be tested quickly according to their clinical priority.

Information on waiting times for diagnostic scans is not collected centrally. The Health Department is currently working with the Information Services Division and NHSScotland to improve the collection and analysis of information about diagnostic waiting to enable NHS boards to manage, report and improve performance against the Executive’s commitments.

Meantime, NHS boards are working to reduce diagnostic waiting times for patients through service redesign, investment in capacity and more efficient working to ensure that the standards will be met. Many NHS boards are making use of the MRI and CT scanning services provided by the Golden Jubilee National Hospital.

Information on staff in post by NHS board in NHS Scotland is published on the Scottish Health Statistics website under Workforce Statistics, at www.isdscotland.org/workforce.

Section B gives details of medical staff employed in NHS Scotland. In particular, tables B1 and B2 shows the whole-time equivalent and headcount number of medical staff, for years 1999–2004, broken down by NHS board. Section E gives details of nursing and midwifery staff employed in NHS Scotland. In particular, tables E1 and E2 show the whole-time equivalent and headcount number of nursing and midwifery staff employed, for years 1999–2004, broken down by NHS board.

It is for each board to arrange the provision of a full range of services to its population within the resources made available to it. Records of the costs and financial benefits of individual board level projects are not maintained centrally.

Boards make changes to services, including re-provision and merging of services, for quality of service and sustainability reasons as well as for value for money reasons. For example, a board might bring stand-alone maternity services onto an acute hospital site so that there could be immediate access to adult intensive care facilities.

Deaths in Scotland Where Obesity¹ was Mentioned on The Death Certificate, 1995–2004

Note: 1. 1995-1999, ICD9 code 278.0; 2000-04, ICD10 code E66

It is likely that the figures quoted under-estimate the true figure because such information may not always be recorded by the doctor completing the medical certificate of cause of death.