Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government, working collaboratively with NHS National Services Scotland, is developing the Scottish Primary Care Information Resource (SPIRE). This will enable the extraction of data from GP practices where those practices agree to participate. SPIRE is being deployed across Scotland during 2016-17.

The project benefits are expected to encourage practices and patients to participate, thus enabling NHS organisations and approved researchers to use SPIRE in ways that can help everyone in Scotland. For example:

Supporting research into new treatments;

Planning services and care for patients with particular conditions;

Responding to major public health issues like a flu epidemic;

Improving the provision of health and care to vulnerable groups; and

Developing knowledge about the uptake of medicines.

The Practice Team Information (PTI) dataset of GP practices captured READ diagnostics codes for individual patients that provide an insight into multimorbidities. The PTI dataset was a survey of around 70 practices that ran until 2012-13.

The Scottish Government, working collaboratively with NHS National Services Scotland, is developing the Scottish Primary Care Information Resource (SPIRE) to replace PTI. This will enable the extraction of data from GP practices where those practices agree to participate. SPIRE is being deployed across Scotland during 2016-17.

SPIRE is able to extract all relevant available data from GP practices, including diagnostics and drugs codes and thus provide information on multimorbidity.

This information is not held centrally however this information may be available from The Royal College of General Practitioners.

The Scottish Government expect all NHS boards, including the Scottish Ambulance Service, to provide staff with the relevant training and support to allow them to help and assist patients with mental health problems.

Mental health is one of the modules covered in the training provided to trainee technicians which is required to be completed in order to become a fully-trained ambulance technician. During this course students are made aware of where to access guidance and support, should they have any questions or concerns during an incident that they attend. The course is followed up by a patient assessment module where the students practice some scenarios based on mental health emergencies giving them the opportunity to practice their skills in dealing effectively with such scenarios.

There is no centrally held information on average waiting times for breast cancer radiography.

The Scottish Government has set two standards for patients diagnosed with cancer. The first is that patients who have been urgently referred with a suspicion of cancer or are referred from one of the national cancer screening programmes, should begin treatment within 62 days. The second standard is that all patients diagnosed with cancer, irrespective of the route of referral, should begin treatment within 31 days from the date that the decision to treat was agreed with the patient.

These standards apply to first treatments, helping to speed up the diagnostic pathway and reducing the period of uncertainty that can exist whilst trying to establish a diagnosis. While there is no centrally held information on average waiting times for breast cancer radiography these standards provide assurance to patients that the immediate cancer control measures are being started as soon as possible.

Between July to September 2015 (quarter 3 2015) 97.3 per cent of patients referred urgently with a suspicion of breast cancer had their first treatment within 62 days. In addition 96.3 per cent of all breast cancer patients received their first treatment within 31 days of a decision to treat.

The information requested is not collected centrally.

Mammography scans would be covered through the delivery of our overarching waiting time standard that 90% of patients are seen and treated within 18 weeks from initial referral to start of treatment, as it is important that every part of the patient pathway is as swift as possible including any diagnostic tests required.

We are working closely with the Royal College of Radiologists, national representatives of radiology and NHSScotland health boards to ensure we have the right number of radiologists in place now and in the future to deliver a safe service.

The number of consultant clinical radiologists across NHSScotland has increased by 52.1 whole time equivalent, or 19.2 per cent since September 2010.

The information requested is published by Information Service Division Scotland and is shown in Table 1:

Table 1. Whole time equivalent of consultant clinical radiologists from 30 September 2010 to 31 December 2015.

Source: Scottish Workforce Information Standard System.

Notes:

1. From June 2014 a number of boards have migrated to the new national HR system e:ESS. This affects medical grade and medical specialty, changes may be seen as boards review their data during the migration process.

2. The symbol “-” signifies where a figure is nil.

3. Data as at 30 September 2010 used as prior to 2011, information was published on a yearly basis.

The Scottish Government is promoting clinical academic research by general practitioners through annual funding (£381k in 2015-16) via the Chief Scientist Office (CSO) for the Scottish Primary Care Research Network that supports high quality primary care research in Scotland. The Scottish Government is also investing £1.25 million from 2015-16 to 2017-18 in the Scottish School of Primary Care that encourages and co-ordinates research and training in primary care.

Opportunities for general practitioners in Scotland to apply for research funding are provided through CSO’s response mode research grant schemes and clinical academic fellowship schemes and through CSO funding of Scottish participation in National Institute for Health Research programmes of research.

Information on the vacancy rate for psychologists in A&E departments, broken down by NHS Scotland health board, is not centrally held.

The Scottish Government has announced an additional £150 million for mental health services over the next five years. As part of this funding, £4.8 million will be awarded to Healthcare Improvement Scotland to establish a ‘Mental Health Access Improvement Support Team’ who will provide a comprehensive package of support to work in partnership with boards to improve access to mental health services.

The total number of clinical staff employed in psychology services across NHS Scotland has increased by 24.5 per cent since March 2011. Any fluctuation in vacancies is linked to our efforts to increase capacity by recruiting even more staff.

Further information on the psychology workforce is published by Information Service Division Scotland and can be found at the following link:

http://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Workforce/Psychology/.

Information on the vacancy rate of all applied psychologists being advertised within psychology services in each NHSScotland health board is provided from September 2011 to December 2015 in Table 1.

Information on vacancy rates of (b) liaison psychologists and (c) consultant psychologists in each NHSScotland health board in each of the last five years is not held centrally.

The Scottish Government has announced an additional £150 million for mental health services over the next five years. As part of this funding, £4.8 million will be awarded to Healthcare Improvement Scotland to establish a ‘Mental Health Access Improvement Support Team’ who will provide a comprehensive package of support to work in partnership with boards to improve access to mental health services.

The total number of clinical staff employed in psychology services across NHSScotland has increased by 24.5 per cent since March 2011. Any fluctuation in vacancies is linked to our efforts to increase capacity by recruiting even more staff.

Table 1: Whole time equivalent of psychologist vacancies being advertised within psychology services by NHS board as at September 2011 to December 2015.

Source NHS Education for Scotland Information Services Division (ISD) Psychology Workforce Database.

Further information on the psychology workforce is published by ISD Scotland and can be found at the following link:

http://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Workforce/Psychology/.