Chamber and committees

The Principal Contract for the Forth Replacement Crossing includes a requirement for the Contractor to provide an average of 46 positions for the long-term unemployed each year and for all positions to be advertised in local job centres.

Similarly, for the M9 Junction 1a Contract an average of five positions each year must be provided.

The Scottish Government received an assurance from NHS boards that they do not send patients to England at short-notice. The current guidance makes clear that offers of treatment to patients should be fair and reasonable. However, the guidance was drawn up some years ago and the Scottish Government is currently refreshing it so that there is no possibility of misinterpretation.

The term “malnutrition” can be used to mean a range of different conditions. The definition of malnutrition used here comprises a specific group of diagnoses which would be used to identify cases of protein/energy malnutrition (ICD-10 codes E40-E46 only).

This definition is the same as that used in questions relating to patients who died in hospital who had malnutrition recorded as a principal or contributory cause of death.

The following tables show the number of patients treated in acute hospitals in Scotland, who had a recorded diagnosis of protein/energy malnutrition regardless of the principal reason for admission to hospital, broken down by NHS board of residence and age group.

Table 1 - Number of patients treated in acute hospitals in Scotland, who had a recorded diagnosis of protein/energy malnutrition¹ regardless of the principal reason for admission to hospital, broken down by NHS board of residence, and age group for the year ending 31 March 2010:

Source: ISD Scotland, SMR01.

Table 2 - Number of patients treated in acute hospitals in Scotland, who had a recorded diagnosis of protein/energy malnutrition¹ regardless of the principal reason for admission to hospital, broken down by NHS board of residence, and age group for the year ending 31 March 2011:

Source: ISD Scotland, SMR01.

Notes:

* Indicates a value that has been suppressed due to the potential risk of disclosure and to help maintain patient confidentiality.

Cases have been selected using the following ICD-10 codes: E40 to E46:

E40.- Kwashiorkor. Severe malnutrition with nutritional oedema with dyspigmentation of skin and hair.

E41.- Nutritional marasmus. Severe malnutrition with marasmus

E42.- Marasmic kwashiorkor. Severe protein-energy malnutrition [as in E43.-]: intermediate form with signs of both kwashiorkor and marasmus

E43.- Unspecified severe protein-energy malnutrition

E44.- Protein-energy malnutrition of moderate and mild degree

E45.- Retarded development following protein-energy malnutrition

E46.- Unspecified protein-energy malnutrition

Data for NHS Scotland for 2010-11 are estimated to be 95% complete. NHS Grampian and NHS Lanarkshire data are estimated to be 64% and 84% complete respectively. This is mainly due to the implementation of a new IT Patient Management System which has resulted in data submission backlogs for this time period. The NHS boards are working to resolve these submission issues.

Deaths occurring in hospital for which "malnutrition" (E40-E46) was (i) the underlying cause, or (ii) a contributory factor, by health board of residence (for Scots residents) rather than by location of hospital.

These figures update some of those provided in answer to question S3W-35262 on 3 August 2010. "Malnutrition" is as defined in ICD-10: codes E40-E46. Because records were selected using these cause of death codes, the figures include cases where the cause of death text included a synonym (e.g. "undernourished", "malnourishment", "emaciation").

As is the usual practice for NRS statistics broken down by NHS board, they are based on the area of residence of the deceased (assuming that it was in Scotland) rather than the location of the hospital in which the person died. Each part of the table shows only those boards which have a non-zero figure (e.g. Dumfries and Galloway, Orkney and Shetland do not appear in the tables, as they had no deaths with malnutrition codes allocated to them).

(i) Malnutrition was the Underlying Cause of death, deaths registered in 2010

(ii) Malnutrition was a Contributory Factor (but NOT the underlying cause), deaths registered in 2010

Source: National Records of Scotland.

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.

Table 1 shows the 28-day hospital emergency readmission rate from surgical and medical specialties in the financial year ending 31 March 2011, for people aged 65 and over, broken down by NHS board of residence.

All discharges (defined as a continuous stay in hospital), which meet the selection criteria, are included in the analysis. Each discharge is then compared with the next admission to hospital for the same patient. If this subsequent admission occurs within 28 days of the date of discharge for the previous hospital stay and is coded as an emergency admission, it is selected as a relevant readmission.

The period of 28 days is to some extent arbitrary, but has been widely adopted as maximising the tradeoff between including as many readmissions related to the initial discharge as possible and excluding as many unrelated readmissions as possible. The figures include readmissions within 28 days whether or not the readmission was related to the previous hospital stay.

Table 1: Number of discharges with a subsequent emergency readmission within 28 days, and hospital emergency readmission rate as a percentage of all discharges, for patients aged 65 and over; for medical and surgical specialties by NHS board of residence; financial year 2010-11

Source: ISD Scotland SMR01.

Data for NHS Scotland for 2010-11 are estimated to be 95% complete. NHS Grampian and NHS Lanarkshire data are estimated to be 64% and 84% complete respectively. This is mainly due to the implementation of a new IT Patient Management System which has resulted in data submission backlogs for this time period. The NHS boards are working to resolve these submission issues.

I have asked John Ewing, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service, to respond. His response is as follows:

The information requested is not readily available. Data from the Scottish Prison Service management information system allows the analysis of prisoners’ incarceration histories. However, these data are not held in a way which allows routine analysis of previous convictions other than those resulting in a custodial sentence.

I have asked John Ewing, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service, to respond. His response is as follows:

Analysis of the most recently available Scottish Prison Service data shows that about 70% of prisoners convicted of drug related offences have previously received custodial sentences for drug-related offences during the past 10 years.

There were 2,859,677 emergency inpatient bed days for people aged 65 and over in the financial year ending 31 March 2010.

Emergency inpatient bed days data for people aged 65 and over for financial year ending 31 March 2011 will be available in the ISD Scotland Acute Hospital Activity and NHS Beds Information National Statistics publication due to be released on 20 December 2011 at:

http://www.isdscotland.org/index.asp.

Scotland level data for 2010-11 will, however, be unavailable due to data submission issues for some NHS boards. This is mainly due to the implementation of a new IT Patient Management System which has resulted in data submission backlogs for this time period. Currently, NHS Grampian and NHS Lanarkshire data are estimated to be 64% and 84% complete respectively. Data for the remaining twelve NHS boards will be available within the Acute Hospital Activity and NHS Beds Information National Statistics publication. The NHS boards are working to resolve these submission issues.

Table 1 shows the 28-day hospital emergency readmission rate from surgical and medical specialties in the financial year ending 31 March 2011, broken down by NHS board of residence.

All discharges (defined as a continuous stay in hospital), which meet the selection criteria, are included in the analysis. Each discharge is then compared with the next admission to hospital for the same patient. If this subsequent admission occurs within 28 days of the date of discharge for the previous hospital stay and is coded as an emergency admission, it is selected as a relevant readmission.

The period of 28 days is to some extent arbitrary, but has been widely adopted as maximising the trade off between including as many readmissions related to the initial discharge as possible and excluding as many unrelated readmissions as possible. The figures include readmissions within 28 days whether or not the readmission was related to the previous hospital stay.

Table 1: Number of discharges with a subsequent emergency readmission within 28 days, and hospital emergency readmission rate as a percentage of all discharges; by medical and surgical specialties and NHS board of residence; financial year 2010-11:

Source: ISD Scotland SMR01

Data for NHS Scotland for 2010-11 are estimated to be 95% complete. NHS Grampian and NHS Lanarkshire data are estimated to be 64% and 84% complete respectively. This is mainly due to the implementation of a new IT Patient Management System which has resulted in data submission backlogs for this time period. The NHS boards are working to resolve these submission issues.

This question relates to operational matters that are the responsibility of the Scottish Court Service (SCS) corporate body. The question has been passed to the Chief Executive of the SCS who will reply in writing.