Chamber and committees

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

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.

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.

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

This information is not held centrally. Mechanisms for how complaints about bullying are recorded are matters for each individual Health Board within the framework of the relevant policy and procedure.

The Scottish Government is clear that bullying and harassment in our NHS is unacceptable under any circumstances. We continue to work with our partners to create a culture where all staff feel confident they can speak up about any dignity at work issues they may have.

We are carrying out a 'Once for Scotland' review of all our workforce HR policies, including bullying and harassment. The aim is to create a consistent approach with simplified, improvement focussed policies, which are person centred and supportive to all those involved.

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.

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

The Scottish Government wants everyone with a neurological condition to be able to access the care and support they need to live well, on their own terms, and we are determined to improve access to mental health services for all those who need them. We are investing £250 million in services over five years, and £54 million to help NHS Boards improve access to psychological therapies by investing in workforce development, recruitment and retention, and service improvement support. Additionally, we support NHS 24 to provide a number of other services designed to expand access to treatment including computerised Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.

Tackling obesity and the growing prevalence of type 2 diabetes are high priorities for the Scottish Government.

In addition to the Diet & Healthy Weight delivery plan, last summer I published the Type 2 Diabetes Prevention, Early Detection and Intervention Framework , the implementation of which will be supported by £42 million over the next 5 years. The framework provides national guidance to NHS Boards on the provision of evidenced-based weight management interventions. This includes very low calorie diets and total diet replacement programmes with staged food re-introduction, to suitable patients, based on evidence of successful remission results from the DiRECT trial, a collaboration between University of Glasgow, Newcastle University and Diabetes UK.

The Type 2 Diabetes Prevention, Early Detection and Intervention Framework can be found at this line: https://www.gov.scot/publications/healthier-future-framework-prevention-early-detection-early-intervention-type-2/pages/11/ .