Chamber and committees

Officials meet with NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde’s (NHS GG&C) Cancer Team on a weekly basis to ensure every urgent suspicion of cancer (USC) patient is moving timeously through their pathway. These discussions are based on management information, not in the public domain.

The majority of cancer treatments have continued throughout the pandemic. Where changes have been made to a patient’s treatment plan, due to COVID, the decision is made jointly with the clinical team and patient.

NHS GG&C treated 97.1% of cancer patients within 31 days of a decision to treat being made in Q2 2021. Latest statistics are available via:

https://publichealthscotland.scot/publications/cancer-waiting-times/cancer-waiting-times-1-april-to-30-june-2021/

While elective surgery has not halted in NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, there have been reductions in the number of elective surgeries being carried out in order to focus on cancer and other urgent cases.

The scale-down of elective routine surgery is under weekly review, and an increase in sessions is planned from week beginning 18 October; however, this will be dependent on staffing levels and COVID patient numbers.

As of 12 October 2021, 36 projects have been awarded funding through the Green Jobs Fund (GJF). This amounts to £8,944,969 of funding across 18 different local authority areas. The total number of jobs to be created from this first allocation of funding is expected to be 517.8 FTE. A second GJF funding allocation round will take place later this year.

The following table shows the breakdown of current awards by local authority, detailing the amounts awarded, the number of awards made and the number of jobs expected to be created in each local authority as a result of the funding allocated.

The Scottish Government encourages essential workers, along with the wider adult population and secondary school-aged pupils, to participate in regular asymptomatic testing irrespective of their vaccination status.

The Scottish Government’s asymptomatic workplace testing programmes provide free test kits to a wide range of public, private and third-sector businesses and organisations. Different testing regimens are employed as appropriate to the setting. Most workplaces offering regular asymptomatic testing use twice-weekly testing with lateral flow devices. Weekly polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing is offered to specific cohorts of staff, including Scottish Prison Service staff and health and social care staff working with clinically vulnerable patients.

Table 1, a copy of which has been placed in SPICE (bib 62727), highlights data from NHS Education Scotland and Scottish Funding Council showing both the recommended and actual intakes to pre-registration nursing and midwifery programmes, broken down by institution from 2007 to 2020. Figures for 2021 have not been published yet.

The requested information is not centrally held. NHS Education for Scotland publish annual data on joiners/leavers, but this information is not available by reason or destination.

Information on joiners/leavers by staff group for each financial year can be found on the following link:

https://turasdata.nes.nhs.scot/media/tnvdmmwd/turnover_m2021_updated.xlsx

Weekly information on the mode of outpatient clinical interactions by NHS Board is published by Public Health Scotland (PHS) as part of the Wider Impacts Dashboard .

Table one shows new and return outpatient face to face appointments by NHS Board of Treatment between 2 March 2020 to 27 December 2020

The requested information is not centrally held. NHS Education for Scotland publish annual data on joiners/leavers, but this information is not available by reason or destination.

Information on joiners/leavers by staff group for each financial year can be found on the following link:

https://turasdata.nes.nhs.scot/media/tnvdmmwd/turnover_m2021_updated.xlsx

All pandemic PPE procurement undertaken by public sector organisations has been conducted in line with the relevant public procurement legislation and policy. In addition, direct awards have taken place using procedures outlined in Regulation 33 within the Public Contract (Scotland) Regulation 2015.

Information on contracts awarded by the Scottish Government for PPE was included in the answers to PQs S6W-02211 and S6W-02212 on 28 September 2021.

Information on contracts let by other national public sector organisations is a matter for those bodies.

The Procurement (Scotland) Regulations require all public bodies to publish an award notice for all regulated procurements no later than thirty days after the award of the contract. These can be found on the Public Contracts Scotland website: www.publiccontractsscotland.gov.uk

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 COVID pandemic has inevitably affected A&E attendance and the pressure is being felt across the UK. While Scotland continues to have the best performing A&E in the whole of the UK, our NHS staff are facing unprecedented pressures as they work tirelessly and consistently to respond to the pandemic whilst continuing to provide vital treatment and optimal patient care.

Demand on NHS Highland services has been, and continues to be challenged. This is largely due to limited bed capacity due to staffing pressures, and an increase in attendances to A&E by those who are much sicker and require higher levels of care.

We are in daily contact with NHS Highland and continue to support improvement work within the Board and the Health & Social Care Partnerships to minimise delays for patients no matter where they are in the system. We also invested an additional £12 million in the summer to support improvements, NHS Highland has used its allocation to increase capacity in community hospitals.

Additionally, to help alleviate pressures across the whole system we announced a substantial new investment of over £300 million in hospital and community care to support the NHS and social care system over winter. The new funding will support a range of measures to maximise capacity in hospitals and primary care, reduce delayed discharges, improve pay for social care staff, and ensure those in the community who need support receive effective and responsive care, helping to improve waiting times for people attending A&E.