Chamber and committees

There has been a significant, long term move towards procedures carried out as day-cases and reducing lengths of stay, to the benefit of patients meaning less time spent in hospital.

This includes significant progress in the delivery of same-day discharge arthroplasty, allowing patients to be safely discharged home on the same day as their procedure, increasing capacity within Orthopaedics.

The Centre for Sustainable Delivery will enable us to see 140,000 new outpatients each year, an increase of 55,500 procedures per year by the end of this plan - a 20% increase over pre-Covid levels – and Specialty Delivery Groups have been set up to drive opportunities across regions on same day surgery, for example in gynaecology pathways.

The Scottish Government is aware that Sir Lewis Ritchie intends to undertake further visits to Skye, Lochlash and South West Ross, within the coming 6 months, to engage with clinical colleagues, members of the local community and NHS Highland officials This will likely include virtual meetings as well as in person visits.

Scottish Government published analysis in October 2022 estimating around 73% of people eligible for Young Carer Grant received the payment in 2021-22. These figures are available at:

https://www.gov.scot/publications/take-up-rates-scottish-benefits-october-2022/

In addition, information relating to Young Carer Grant applications is routinely published by Social Security Scotland as part of Official Statistics releases. The statistics currently include a breakdown of received applications, as well as authorised applications, by local authority and financial year. These statistics are available at https://www.socialsecurity.gov.scot/about/statistics/social-security-scotland-statistics-publications .

As part of work to continuously improve Official Statistics outputs, the forthcoming Young Carer Grant statistics release will include a local authority breakdown expanded to report denied and withdrawn applications. These Official Statistics will be published on 21 March 2023.

Pandemics and infectious disease threats feature in both Scottish and UK risk assessments which are used to inform our response to these risks.

Responsibility for service delivery, including recruitment and retention of medical and non-medical staff in primary care, sits locally with Health Boards and health and social care partnerships and their GP practices.

The Scottish Government recognises that in order to attract health and social care staff locally, it is important that locally accessible training opportunities are provided at an early stage. The NHS Scotland Youth Academy host regional huddle groups that are focused on raising awareness and attracting young people/parents into health and social care careers.

Since 2015, 663,670 households have accessed the Home Energy Scotland advice service in the following local authority areas:

We are developing a new 10 year cancer strategy that will launch in Spring 2023 and takes a comprehensive approach to improving patient pathways from prevention and diagnosis through to treatment and post-treatment care. We are considering the specific needs of blood cancer patients.

We plan to publish a new cancer strategy in Spring 2023.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-15536. on‎ 17 March 2023. Any update of progress of this independent review would require to come from NHS Highland as the responsible agency for implementation.

All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

Further meetings with Professor Sir Lewis Ritchie, NHS Highland, elected members of Skye, Lochalsh and South West Ross and the wider public community have built on the recommendations in the original (2018) report. Professor Sir Lewis Ritchie issued his written view of assessment of progress, with further recommendations and qualifications to the respective local Chairs of Implementation of the SLSWR OOH Review Report and NHS Highland Board, following in-person visits to Skye in December 2018 and May 2019 and a virtual assessment of progress in October 2020, during the height of the Covid-19 Pandemic.