Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government policy is clear that it has no intention to charge patients who miss appointments. There can be many reasons why a patient may not attend. For example if there was a family emergency. To put a system in place to charge patients for non-attendance is likely to be highly expensive to operate.

The Scottish Government is committed to supporting health boards implement policies to reduce missed appointments such as providing reminder services through text, emails and social media. This will allow reminder services to be tailored for patients who are most likely not to attend.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-15438 on 18 April 2018. 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 .

Information on missed appointments is collected centrally for first outpatient consultation only. There were 145,493 missed first outpatient appointments during the calendar year 2017 - this is from over 1.4 million new outpatient appointments undertaken during the year.

The specific information requested is not available centrally.

We expect Boards to continue to review the reasons why patients do not attend appointments and look for ways to improve their booking practices and clinic times such as running clinics at night or weekends as well as providing reminder services through text, emails and social media. These type of changes can lead to fewer missed appointments as well as providing more efficient and effective services.

It is every patient's responsibility to keep their NHS appointment and it is important that they let the NHS know when they cannot attend. However, we also recognise that the NHS has to be flexible in helping make appointments convenient to patients.

The Scottish Government is committed to supporting health boards implement policies to reduce missed appointments such as providing reminder services through text, emails and social media. This will allow reminder services to be tailored to patients who are most likely not to attend.

Information is collected centrally for missed appointments for a first outpatient consultations only. The following tables provide information on the number of first outpatient appointments and the number of patients who did not attend a first outpatient appointment for the last five years by NHS Board.

Telecoms is reserved to the UK Government. As such, the Scottish Government does not hold data of this type.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information. However the most recent ScotRail figures we have shown that for the four weeks to 3 March 2018, 633,000 passenger journeys took place using Smart.

The Scottish Government is highly supportive of the cruise industry and its continued growth. Cruise Scotland figures for the 2018 season show an estimated 815 vessel calls at member ports delivering an expected 821,000 passengers right across Scotland. Our public bodies, including VisitScotland and Scottish Enterprise, are working with the industry to help sustainable growth in the industry. This includes increased support for cruise tourism in consumer facing communications from VisitScotland plus closer working with Cruise Scotland at a corporate level.

The Scottish Government has also been working with the cruise industry at the strategic, global level. This is in order to highlight the industry success to date and continued potential sustainable growth in order to encourage further private investment, matching the continued Scottish Government spending on marine infrastructure.

In addition the Scottish Government has run three highly successful Cruise seminars bringing Scottish cruise industry representatives, global operators and relevant Scottish policy makers together.

As part of the Glasgow City Region City Deal, Inverclyde Council and Peel Ports are building an expansion of the quayside and delivering a new visitor centre to further expand cruise ship capacity and facilities at Greenock .