Chamber and committees

We recognise the significant pressure on Orthopaedic Waiting Times, and actions to address this are being considered within the wider context of planned care recovery.

We are working closely with Boards to finalise planned care activity plans, including for orthopaedics, for 2022-23, which will be critical to stabilising and improving our health and social care system in the medium term.

The National Treatment Centre (NTC) Programme will deliver the single biggest increase in protected planned care capacity ever created in NHSScotland. The network of 10 NTCs, will deliver capacity for over 40,000 additional planned procedures and diagnostic care across 12 specialities. Within next 18 months, NTCs will open in NHS Fife, NHS Forth Valley, NHS Highland and at NHS Golden Jubilee specialising in orthopaedic surgery. On 13 April, we also announced £1.8m of funding to purchase a private hospital in Ayrshire (Carrick Glen) to be developed into a new National Treatment Centre specialising in orthopaedics.

As well as significant investment in new infrastructure, the new NHSScotland Centre for Sustainable Delivery is also leading work to explore new and innovative ideas to reduce In Patient / Day Case and Outpatient waiting times. Examples include:

• The rollout of Active Clinical Referral Triage, to provide patients with information about non-surgical interventions and self-management options;
• Patient Initiated Reviews, enabling patients to be escalated if their condition deteriorates and reduces routine appointments while supporting patients in a safe and clinically appropriate manner; and
• Enhanced Recovery after Surgery pathways, designed to support patients achieve faster recovery after surgery.

Discussions are also progressing with the Centre for Sustainable Delivery to build clinical leadership across all specialties to help innovate and drive productive opportunities to support the recovery of planned care.

The Scottish Government has made a general commitment to providing 24 hour digital access to services through asynchronous communication (generally recognised as the ability to 'chat' with services any time, when an instant response is not required, such as via email and online) through its Digital Health & Care Strategy ‘Care in the Digital Age’. In delivering on that commitment we are currently exploring how GP practices can be supported, recognising a number of individual practices have already commenced offering such services to their patients. Discovery work is now underway to develop a national approach that enables a consistent approach for the people of Scotland. A national steering group is overseeing this development and has established a ‘pathfinder’ approach to better understand the level of demand, market maturity and benefits and impact before seeking to agree a national approach to GP DACS in Scotland. To date, the project has captured insights from both clinical and non-clinical users in order to inform a set of requirements which it is intended will lead to the development of an outline business case.

Investment of over £1.6 billion for social care and integration in the 2022-23 budget progresses our commitment to increase spend in social care specifically by 25% – over £840 million – by the end of this parliament, and supports measures to strengthen the implementation of Self-directed Support, improve prevention and early intervention and to increase the delivery of more community-based support.

The Scottish Government has also committed to abolishing charges for non-residential social care and support and we are currently working with stakeholders to develop options to do so as soon as practicable.

The Resource Spending Review is due to be published in May 2022 and will include details on the Scottish Government’s multi-year funding arrangements across all Portfolios.

The Skills Action Plan for Rural Scotland (SAPRS) is a joint initiative supported by Skills Development Scotland, Scottish Government, Plan stakeholders and partners.

I refer to the response I gave on 7 March 2022 (S6W-06724). An evaluation of the SAPRS is currently underway; it will be published in Summer 2022.

This evaluation will help inform what future action is needed to drive forward co-ordination and delivery of skills for rural Scotland.

The Chief Executive of NHS Scotland and Director-General Health and Social Care put in place a temporary pause on filling vacancies not currently advertised within Health and Social Care Directorates from 4 April 2022. The pause will remain in place for no longer than necessary, while consideration is given to the future pandemic response.

We remain committed to the inclusion of glass in our ambitious Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) in view of the significant environmental benefits. Although the ambition of other nations’ schemes is a matter for their governments, we welcome the Welsh Government’s decision to follow our example and include glass in their scheme. We will work with all the other UK administrations to ensure interoperability of our schemes where this can be done without losing the ambition of our own.

Although the UK Government has provided some limited information about their intentions in respect of DRS through the government response to the consultation on extended producer responsibility for packaging, we are still awaiting the full details of their approach. We expect to see these in their response to their DRS consultation.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-08079 on 4 May 2022. 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 .

The exchange of factually accurate patient information is pivotal to the delivery of high quality, safe, patient centred healthcare whether it takes place locally, regionally, nationally in Scotland or elsewhere in the UK. Normal practice would be that where a patient is referred by a specialist team in Scotland to a specialist team in another part of the UK, the clinician responsible for their care would write a formal referral letter which would include details of the patients diagnosis, investigations already undertaken, treatments pursued so far and any proposed treatment plan or specific request of the team to which they are referring. It is also often the case that the referring clinician may provide some further detail as part of a Multidisciplinary Team Discussion, Virtual Consultation or telephone call.

On the occasion that the treatment is unplanned, the NHS facility providing the treatment should contact the individual’s GP Practice, in Scotland, directly to exchange key information from their patient record. NHS National Services Scotland (NSS) are available to support Scottish practices and the NHS in England, Wales and Northern Ireland to facilitate the sharing of records and or important information about the patient.

Systems integration and providing greater access for the public to their health and care data is a priority for Scottish Government and our ambitions are set out in our Digital Health and Care Strategy which was published in October 2022 and available at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/scotlands-digital-health-care-strategy/

The Genetic Laboratory Major Service review considered the workforce requirements for our future genomics capabilities in NHS Scotland. A link to the report is available here:https://www.nss.nhs.scot/specialist-healthcare/specialist-services/genetic-and-molecular-pathology-laboratories/

In line with the recommendations from the Major Service Review, the NSD Transformation Team will consider the workforce planning requirements to implement the recommendations from the report in developing the action plan.

Over the coming months we will be expanding the membership of our Scottish Genomics Leadership Group(SGLG) and relevant work stream to include a wider pool of stakeholders than those currently on the SGLG. This expanded structure will consider the recommendations from the Major Service Review as well as considerations for further genomics expansion.

One of the workstreams will lead on workforce planning and will be done in partnership with relevant Trade Union representatives.