Chamber and committees

Questions and answers

Parliamentary questions can be asked by any MSP to the Scottish Government or the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. The questions provide a means for MSPs to get factual and statistical information.

Written questions must be answered within 10 working days (20 working days during recess)
Other questions such as Topical, Portfolio, General and First Minister's Question Times are taken in the Chamber

Urgent Questions aren't included in the Question and Answers search. There is a SPICe fact sheet listing Urgent and emergency questions.

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Question reference: S5W-12348

Asked by: Michelle Ballantyne, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 06 November 2017
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 20 November 2017

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to Audit Scotland's comment that a new GP contract is "critical to delivering more care in the community".

Question reference: S5W-12342

Asked by: Michelle Ballantyne, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 06 November 2017
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 20 November 2017

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the comment by Audit Scotland that there is a "potential funding gap" in the estimated £2 billion required for NHS boards’ capital programmes.

Question reference: S5W-12335

Asked by: Michelle Ballantyne, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 06 November 2017
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 20 November 2017

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the comment by Audit Scotland that the Health and Social Care Delivery Plan "does not set out in detail how the changes described in it will be achieved".

Question reference: S5W-12346

Asked by: Michelle Ballantyne, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 06 November 2017
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 20 November 2017

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to Audit Scotland's comment that "the Scottish Government has not yet adequately estimated what impact increasing and changing demand for services could have on the workforce or skills required to meet this need".

Part 1 of the National Health and Social Care Workforce Plan published on 28 June 2017 is clear on the need to project the future supply and demand of the NHSScotland workforce, using scenario planning to factor in future population demand and workforce supply changes such as retirals.

With strategic oversight from the National Workforce Planning Group set up under Part 1, the Scottish Government is working closely with stakeholders in NHSScotland and NHS Education Scotland to develop the workforce data and scenario planning capacity required to build an accurate picture of the workforce needed to deliver safe, high quality NHSScotland services in future.

Question reference: S5W-12318

Asked by: Michelle Ballantyne, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 06 November 2017
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 20 November 2017

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to reports that the national performance standard target for A&E attendees to be seen within four hours is not being met on a regular basis, and when it expects to achieve this on a sustained basis.

Unscheduled care is a key priority for Scottish Government and we want all hospitals across Scotland to sustainably achieve 95% of all patients attending A&E to been seen, treated and discharged or admitted with four hours. The latest weekly performance against the four hour A&E target for the w/e
29 October was 94.0%.

Since the launch of the six essential actions two years ago we have delivered significant improvements; Scotland is leading the way in the UK in terms of performance against the four hour A&E target, the number of patients waiting longer than four hours has reduced by 10% since 2012-13 compared to 180% increase in England.

Scotland’s performance in September was almost 8 percentage points better than England; more than 23 percentage points better that NI and almost 12 percentage points better than Wales (England 84.6%; Northern Ireland 69.4%, and Wales 80.6%); Scotland’s core site performance has been ahead of England for
31 consecutive months, to September 2017.

But we are not complacent. I recognise that more needs to be done to ensure a sustainable improvement in performance especially as we go in to the winter period. That is why I recently announced an additional £5 million to support winter resilience. This is over and above the £9 million, announced in May 2017, to support Unscheduled Care - total of £14 million for winter 2017, compared to £12 million the previous year.

Question reference: S5W-12316

Asked by: Michelle Ballantyne, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 06 November 2017
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 20 November 2017

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to reports that the national performance standard target for waiting less that 12 weeks for an outpatient appointment is not being met on a regular basis, and when it expects to achieve this on a sustained basis.

Question reference: S5W-12319

Asked by: Michelle Ballantyne, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 06 November 2017
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 20 November 2017

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to reports that the national performance standard target for cancer treatment to begin within 62 weeks of referral is not being met on a regular basis, and when it expects to achieve this on a sustained basis.

The national performance standard for cancer is 95 per cent of patients referred urgently with a suspicion of cancer are to begin treatment within 62 days of receipt of referral.

We know further work is needed to shorten waits for diagnostics and in September 2017 we formed a Ministerial Cancer Performance Delivery Group to drive forward service redesign and improvement, backed by £1 million investment on top of
£4.85 million already allocated to boards.

Among a series of actions the group will audit processes for managing patients with a suspected cancer, implement new scrutiny and monitoring processes for health boards struggling to meet the 62 day standard, and invest in the roll-out of new technology to assist with pressures on diagnostic services.

Question reference: S5W-12315

Asked by: Michelle Ballantyne, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 06 November 2017
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 20 November 2017

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to reports that the national performance standard target for referral to treatment within 18 weeks is not being met on a regular basis, and when it expects to achieve this on a sustained basis.

We are taking significant action to reduce waiting times, that is why I made an additional £50 million available to NHS Boards earlier this year.

I announced on 29 August the setting up of an expert group to reduce waiting times and improve the way elective care services are provided. The Elective Access Collaborative programme is bringing experts from the Scottish Government, NHSScotland and the Royal Colleges together in providing support to NHS Boards and will be crucial in bringing about sustained delivery of waiting times. This approach has seen us deliver improvements in unscheduled care. I will be making a further announcement on the early progress the collaborative has made in the coming weeks.

Question reference: S5W-12336

Asked by: Michelle Ballantyne, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 06 November 2017
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 20 November 2017

To ask the Scottish Government what progress it is making in developing a financial framework to illustrate how moving healthcare from acute settings into communities will be funded.

Question reference: S5W-12347

Asked by: Michelle Ballantyne, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 06 November 2017
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 20 November 2017

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will implement Audit Scotland’s recommendation to (a) improve understanding of future demand to inform workforce decisions, including carrying out scenario planning on the future populations’ health demand and workforce supply changes, (b) provide a clear breakdown of the costs of meeting projected demand through additional recruitment across all healthcare staff groups and (c) set out the expected transitional workforce costs and expected savings associated with implementing NHS reform.

Part 1 of the National Health and Social Care Workforce Plan, published on 28 June 2017, reflects Audit Scotland’s recommendation and is clear on the need to develop capacity to project future supply and demand. Further work is proceeding at local, regional and national levels via NHS Education for Scotland and other NHSScotland bodies to develop a scenario planning model which can be implemented nationally, regionally and locally.

The Scottish Government already requires NHS Boards to undertake an annual workforce planning and projections process, and factors the information provided by NHS Boards into its financial plans.