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.

NHS boards are currently scoping the work required to enhance major trauma services across Scotland, including the resource implications.

The National Planning Forum and board of Chief Executives will identify any additional resources required as part of this work, and will keep Scottish Ministers appraised of their plans to ensure that the major trauma quality framework is implemented.

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.

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.

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.

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

Any individual with concerns about their health should, in the first instance, see their GP. There is a wide range of information and advice available on health and wellbeing from GP practices, community pharmacies and from websites such as NHS Inform and Take Life On.

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.

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.

These costs are driven by activity which is not possible to forecast.