Chamber and committees

In Scotland highly specialised health services are commissioned through the National Services Division of NHS National Services Scotland.

Funds are top sliced from NHS boards to provide a fund for the procurement of the highly specialised services needed by residents of Scotland from hospitals in Scotland, England and in very rare cases, abroad.

There will be no impact on the budget of NHS National Specialist Services and Screening Division following independence.

After independence Scotland will maintain a very strong relationship with the other countries of the UK. Scotland will continue to work with other parts of the UK to provide services where this provides access to the highest quality of care and delivers the best outcomes. There are already effective cross-border working arrangements in place which will provide a strong foundation for continued cooperation.

CalMac will engage with its staff as appropriate throughout the bid submission process. This is already underway through established internal communications channels.

Transport Scotland has had previous engagement on ferries matters with the Scottish Trades Union Congress and the relevant trades unions, representing the employees of David MacBrayne Limited, and would expect that engagement to continue in future.

The Scottish Government has not yet consulted with them on the future tendering of the next Clyde and Hebrides Ferry Services contract, but intend to do so in due course.

An informal meeting with the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency has already taken place on 7 May 2014 and a more formal, larger meeting is being organised and will be attended by officials from the Health and Social Care Directorate in the Scottish Government.

Expenditure on consultancy is published on the David MacBrayne Ltd website in accordance with the requirements of the Public Sector Reform (Scotland) Act 2010.

http://www.david-macbrayne.co.uk/reports/

Any further breakdown of this information is considered commercially sensitive.

I refer the member to the answer to question S4W-21247 on 29 May 2014. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s web site, the search facility for which can be found at:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx

Implementation of the major trauma quality framework will help NHSScotland (including NHS Lothian), to ensure definitive trauma care is provided across Scotland and importantly, better outcomes for people who experience major trauma.

Approximately £50-75k has been identified for developing a web-based service that will provide a more accessible service targeted at working age people in a collaboration between NHS24 and the Centre for Healthy Working Lives. This is expected to go live in 2015. The remainder of the £133k budget has been provided to programmes delivering targeted support for people in communities with high levels of inequalities in health.

Health checks for people reaching their 40th Birthday were introduced as a pilot in Grampian in May 2010 and rolled out across Scotland in February 2011. However, due to the poor level of take up and lack of evidence of improvements in health outcomes the programme was considered, on the basis of clinical advice, not to be delivering value for money and the programme was discontinued from the end of March 2013.

The performance measure is monitored through results of an access survey, which directly measures patients’ experience of getting access to their General Practice, within 48 hours, on the basis of clinical need. The percentages shown are calculated from the results of national surveys of GP practice patients and reflect the views of randomly sampled patients who responded to the survey in each year. They are not based on an evaluation of all appointment records/all patients in each practice.

Latest available figures, published in May 2012, show that 92.6% of patients were offered the opportunity to see or speak to a doctor or nurse within 48 hours – above our target of 90%. 85% of patients were able to see or speak to a doctor or nurse within two working days, 8% were offered an appointment, but the person they wanted to see was not available or the time was not convenient and 7% were unable to get access.

The Scottish Government established the short life working group in December 2013.

Membership of the short life working group includes:

Four Scottish Government staff, three clinical staff and one providing secretariat support;

Two patient representatives;

Five NHS clinical and research staff;

One NHS healthcare planner (member selected by NHSScotland); and

Two other patient representatives who have been consulted separately regarding the patient information and consent leaflet (selected by the clinical staff on the Group).

Except where noted, members were selected by the Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Dr Frances Elliot.