Chamber and committees

The Health and Social Care Delivery Plan: Progress Report was published on the Scottish Government’s website today ( http://www.gov.scot/ISBN/9781839603389 ).

The Report sets out the good progress that has been made to date across our ambitious reform programmes. It commits to update the Delivery Plan by early 2020 to focus intent and sharpen activity on the remaining actions by 2021. The National Programme Board will continue to ensure reform progress remains on track.

The Scottish Government published guidance on the education of children and young people unable to attend school due to ill health in June 2015. This guidance provides advice on the roles and responsibilities of local authorities, hospital and other services to ensure that children and young people can continue to learn whenever possible. Hospitals should ensure that appropriate accommodation is provided so that education can be delivered.

The Food in Hospitals guidance covers catering services for children and young people, the guidance is detailed and outlines the complexity of ensuring that children and young people receive the required nutritional diet whilst in hospital. Boards are required to provide evidence of their compliance with the guidance, alongside their description of how they achieve compliance, or any actions required to meet the requirements. Live self-assessment will commence early next year, with a full national assessment and report available by the end of 2020.

Decisions about admittance to hospital wards are a matter for local NHS Boards, taking into account locality, available services and the diagnosis and circumstances of each individual child or young person.

The Scottish Government expects NHS Boards to ensure that information is provided to children and families about their stay on the ward, either prior to admission if the admission is planned or as part of the admission process. Nursing staff routinely involve children, their families and carers in conversations about what matters to them as part of developing the child’s plan of care, and we would expect further information about ward routines, and any other specific information that would be helpful to that particular patient, to be provided as part of these conversations.

In the 2018-19 Programme for Government we committed to having person-centred visiting on all wards by 2020. This approach is further supporting staff on paediatric wards to have person-centred conversations with children and families on the ward, and for families to be given access to as much information about their child as possible so they can be partners in care.

In June 2019 the Scottish Government published the revised Charter of Patient Rights and Responsibilities, which summarises what everyone is entitled to and what is expected of them when they use NHS services and receive NHS care in Scotland. The Charter includes information about people’s rights in relation to confidentiality, consent, complaints, access to health records and communication with NHS staff. Further information about people’s health rights in Scotland is available on the NHS Inform website, which also provides information about consent and confidentiality developed specifically for young people under 16.

The Patient Rights (Scotland) Act 2011 requires that NHS Boards make copies of the Charter available to patients, staff and members of the public free of charge, taking account of people’s needs when considering the appropriate format.

I refer the Member to the answer to question S5W-26150 on 11 November 2019. 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 the number of cases of pre-eclampsia recorded in each territorial NHS Health Board is not collected centrally. However, I have asked my officials to request this information from the relevant sources and I will write to you following receipt of this information. At the UK level, pre-eclampsia is estimated to affect 1 in 10 pregnancies, equating to approximately 80,000 women per year across the UK.

The Maternal and Infant Quality Improvement Collaborative, part of our Scottish Patient Safety Programme, has maternity, neonatal and paediatric work streams and is rolled out in all NHS Boards in Scotland. The programme, which is now in its 6th year of operation has focussed on improving safety in maternity care, and improving outcomes for mothers and babies.

Work is underway to deliver recommendations made in The Best Start: A Five Year Forward Plan for Maternity and Neonatal Care in Scotland to ensure all pregnant women have timely access to specialist advice when needed. The Maternal Medicine sub-group of The Best Start is leading work with the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow to improve collaborative working in maternity care between physicians and obstetricians in the acute and chronic settings. This work has the support of both college presidents and priorities are strongly influenced by the MBRRACE-UK findings.

The Scottish Government recognises that it is essential to ensure that pre-eclampsia is diagnosed and treated as soon as possible. As part of developing an evidence base in this area, NHS Lothian intends to take part in a trial which will look at the benefits of repeated placental growth factor (PlGF) testing in the care of pregnant women. Work on developing a Women’s Health Group is also progressing and will prioritise the testing for pre-eclampsia in its workplan, looking at recent evidence.

The Scottish Government expects that health professionals will follow relevant professional guidance in their delivery of care, such as Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists Green Top Guidelines and the recently updated NICE guideline Hypertension in pregnancy: diagnosis and management.

The Scottish Government provides funding towards the commissioning of the Maternal Newborn and Infant Clinical Outcome Review Programme run by Mothers and Babies, Reducing Risk through Audits and Confidential Enquiries across the UK (MBRRACE-UK). All maternity units in Scotland contribute data to this and reports focus on pre-eclampsia every 3 years, highlighting recommendations for healthcare professionals, Health Boards and Trusts, policy officials and other organisations to tackle this condition.

Information on the number of cases of pre-term births, stillbirths and maternal deaths attributed to pre-eclampsia, eclampsia and HELLP syndrome recorded in each territorial Health Board is not collected centrally. I have asked my officials to explore whether it is possible to collate this information from various relevant sources and I will write to you following receipt of this information. However, the MBRRACE-UK Saving Lives, Improving Mothers’ Care 2016 report notes that less than one woman in every million who gives birth in the UK now dies from pre-eclampsia.

The Scottish Government recognises that it is essential to ensure that pre-eclampsia is diagnosed and treated as soon as possible. As part of developing an evidence base in this area, NHS Lothian intends to take part in a trial which will look at the benefits of repeated placental growth factor (PlGF) testing in the care of pregnant women. Work on developing a Women’s Health Group is also progressing and will prioritise the testing for pre-eclampsia in its workplan, looking at recent evidence.