Chamber and committees

The Scottish Access Collaborative was created in October 2017 to sustainably improve waiting times for patients waiting for non-emergency procedures. It is working alongside NHS boards in Scotland to reduce waiting times, improve patient experience and develop responses to some of the main challenges facing the NHS. Chronic Pain is one of twelve specialties included in the Scottish Access Collaborative.

Three design workshops were held during 2018-19 aiming to understand the current Chronic Pain pathways, improve patient experience and suggest improvements for the services provided in the future. Patients and third sector groups participated in the workshops and contributed to the report, along with clinicians from the community, primary and secondary care. A report was published in summer 2019 and highlighted seven areas most likely to make a difference for people experiencing Chronic Pain, including ‘develop strong links between primary and secondary care in order to create a clear model of care’ and ‘allocate available resource to educate, train, supply and retain healthcare professionals with the right skills sets in the right places’.

Although there was multi-disciplinary representation from statutory and third sector services and patients at the Design workshops, only a fraction of the chronic pain community was able to participate at the time. Engagement with stakeholders, including third sector service providers and those with lived experience of chronic pain across Scotland, is underway to validate the report findings and identify the priorities to be taken forward; this is being led by the Modernising Patient Pathways Programme with the intention of achieving sustainable and effective service change. The Modernising Patient Pathways Programme has appointed a Clinical Lead with extensive experience of working in Specialist Pain clinics in secondary care services in Scotland and a GP Advisor to support this work.

The relationship between air pollution and health is extremely complex. It is widely documented that air pollution has a negative impact on health. However, the sorts of illness that air pollution can exacerbate can also be affected by multiple other factors – such as obesity, alcohol, smoking, and genetics.

Whilst the Scottish Government currently has no plans to undertake research on the links between air pollution and depression and suicide; we are firmly committed to improving air quality across the country. That is why we have set stringent air quality targets. For example, we are the first country in Europe to adopt in legislation the WHO guideline value for particulate matter 2-5 – a pollutant of special concern for human health. Funding totalling £2.5 million is available annually to local authorities to support action plan development and implementation on air quality and we are working closely with local authorities to deliver a network of Low Emission Zones across Scotland’s four biggest cities by 2020. The first of these was introduced in Glasgow in December 2018.

Each NHS Board is responsible under the Health and Safety at Work Act (1974) and its subsequent regulations, to provide appropriate rest facilities for their staff. They are best placed locally to determine the particular requirements for sleeping pods in hospitals to allow staff to have a rest on their breaks.

The Scottish Government is working with the Royal College of Anaesthetists on the fight-fatigue campaign which aims to raise awareness of the impact of fatigue and shift work on our NHS workforce. The Scottish Partnership Forum (SPF) is actively considering the evidence base for the use of sleep-pods and the Scottish Government will consider the position once the SPF have completed their review, however NHS Boards are currently able to install sleeping pods if they consider it to be a local priority.

NHS Boards have utilised Medinet as part of a national contract recently established to provide activity in Ophthalmology, ENT and Dermatology. This contract was put in place through a formal procurement process run by National Services Scotland (NSS) on behalf of all NHS Boards in Scotland. Details on these arrangement would need to be provided by NSS and the appropriate NHS Boards.

Total spend on the use of the independent sector in NHS Scotland represents 0.6% of the total frontline health budget.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-27068 on 19 February 2020. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx .

I refer the member to the answer to question S4W-30489 on 21 March 2016. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx .

Data on waiting times for return chronic pain appointments is not routinely recorded by NHS Boards. During 2018, Information Services Division (ISD) carried out two pieces of work to explore if this data could be collected and if there were alternative data sets that could be used in absence of routine recording. The outcome of this work is published on the ISD website:

https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Waiting-Times/Chronic-Pain/_docs/15082018-Chronic-Pain-DevelopmentWorkUpdate-24October2018.pdf .

ISD is leading on putting in place a new national data collection for level 3 chronic pain services (Scottish Chronic Pain Service Model) and have recently established a Short Life Working Group (SLWG) to steer and monitor progress and provide governance to the project. To date, the group has met twice (November and December 2019) to consider how to progress the work. A draft dataset (which included additional items along with the core minimum dataset developed by the University of Dundee) was initially discussed at the SLWG in December. It is the intention that this dataset should be collected at various points along the patient pathway. This means it will be possible to better understand the time lag between appointments that patients currently experience.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-13509 on 11 January 2018 which provides details of how the funding was used. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx .

NHS Boards are able to use Medinet as part of a national contract. This contract with Medinet was put in place through a formal procurement process run by NHS National Services Scotland (NSS). NHS Boards are responsible for managing agreed activity and the associated costs of their own contracts, including with Medinet. This information is therefore held at an individual Board level.

The move from nhs.net to nhs.scot is part of the ongoing Office 365 transformation programme that will ensure staff can work more collaboratively and effectively across NHSScotland and, in the future, with Local Authority social care. The nhs.net domain name is owned by NHS Digital (England). Strategic decisions, taken by NHS Digital (England), on the future of the nhs.net email platform have meant that NHS Scotland has to migrate onto a different domain name and a different email system.

The nhs.scot domain name was purchased in 2015 with a current yearly renewal cost of £44.77 (plus VAT). The migration of NHSScotland Boards from nhs.net to nhs.scot with the additional benefits accrued is expected to be completed by September 2020 at a cost of £2.5million.