Chamber and committees

The first £26.7 million of the £850 million has been allocated across all territorial NHS Boards and the Golden Jubilee National Hospital in 2018-19. This funding is being used to increase workforce, purchase new equipment, put on additional clinics in the evenings and weekends and additional theatres. Subsequent funding will be allocated on specific proposals to increase capacity as outlined in the waiting times improvement plan.

Data on waiting times for a chronic pain clinic has only been collated since December 2015.

The below table sets out the median waiting time in weeks for a first appointment at a pain clinic or pain psychology clinic since December 2015.

Table 1: Median wait in weeks for a first appointment at a pain clinic or pain psychology clinic

We have already published workforce plans covering the NHS, Primary Care and Social Care.

We intend to publish our integrated health and social care workforce plan this year, as the Health Secretary made clear when she updated parliament in November. We are also currently taking our safe staffing legislation through the Scottish Parliament – the first multidisciplinary workforce and workload planning legislation in the UK.

Workforce supply pressures are compounded by the impact of Brexit, and we will undertake additional international recruitment activity in this financial year to promote the resilience of NHS Scotland as a result of EU Withdrawal.

Alcoholic Liver disease is one of 15 conditions included in the Alcohol Specific Deaths statistics published annually by National Records of Scotland.

Data for number of deaths by underlying cause of death is available in table 2 of the NRS Alcohol-specific Deaths (new National Statistics definition) Data Tables which are available at the following link.

https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/statistics-and-data/statistics/statistics-by-theme
/vital-events/deaths/alcohol-deaths/alcohol-specific-deaths-new-definition/tables-and-chart

The data for alcoholic liver disease is detailed in the following table.

Alcohol-specific deaths (new National Statistics definition) by underlying cause of death (ICD-10): registered in Scotland, 2000 to 2017

We welcome this report from Parkinson’s UK and will consider it closely as we continue to work with the neurological community to develop Scotland’s first National Action Plan on Neurological Conditions. Through this engagement we have already identified that we need to: understand the gaps in prevalence for neurological conditions; improve and enhance the capture of data; and further develop systems/ processes that support service planning and workforce development based on this information.

The public consultation on our draft plan closed on 8 February 2019. We will carefully consider all feedback received and publish our final plan later this year.

The Scottish Government works closely with Boards to support their efforts in staff recruitment and retention. To support health boards, we are investing £4 million over the next three years in domestic and international recruitment for GPs, nursing, midwifery and consultant specialties with the highest existing vacancy rates.

We are working to develop a comprehensive plan to help address recruitment and retention challenges across the health and social care sector. This includes consultation on Scotland’s first National Action Plan for Neurological Conditions, which covers a number of areas including workforce planning. We are carefully considering the consultations responses with a view to publishing the final plan later this year.

Between April 2017 to March 2018 14 new implantations and 20 battery replacements were performed. Between April 2018 to December 2019 12 new implantations, 1 explantation and 22 battery replacements were performed.

In total 69 surgical interventions were completed.

Source: NHS National Services Scotland

Data for waiting times is collected at speciality level not procedure level. This level of detail should be sought from individual health boards.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-21522 on 26 February 2019. 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 .

Ensuring patients receive their medication on time when in hospital is a fundamental aspect of good quality care. This is set out in professional guidance, published in January 2019 by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, on 'the Administration of Medicines in Healthcare Settings'.

In addition the Chief Pharmaceutical Officer has published a strategy 'Achieving Excellence in Pharmaceutical Care' that makes reference to the use of people’s own medicines when they are inpatients to facilitate medicine compliance in hospitals. This practice supports the medicines reconciliation process and ensures medicine changes are shared with care providers.

Other initiatives, such as semi-automated medicines cabinets, are also beginning to be used in hospital wards and departments that enable timely access to medicines. These cabinets provide automatic ordering of required medication and allow keyless but secure access to stored medication through fingerprint identification, which also enables greater accountability and tracing of medication. We will continue to encourage hospitals to invest in these technologies.