Chamber and committees

A team manager in NHS 24 and its finance department were jointly responsible for monitoring project spend at operational level. I understand that current/projected spend is also monitored at programme board level.

In order to ensure a smooth transition to the NHSScotland Resource Allocation Committee (NRAC) targets for NHS Scotland the Scottish Government committed to phasing in the target shares calculated by the NRAC formula by way of differential growth. Under this methodology, all boards continue to enjoy growth in their allocations year-on-year, with those below their target share receiving more growth than those above until the new distribution is achieved over time. In this way no board receives a cut in funding.

This approach to phasing in funding has been the practice under both the previous SHARE and Arbuthnott formulae. Despite the constraints of the current economic and financial climate, an additional £13 million has been provided to NHS boards below target in financial year 2010-11. The level of additional funding that NHS boards will receive in 2011-12 has yet to be determined.

As the target shares of NHS boards change on an annual basis to reflect changes in the relative need of their populations, it is not possible to provide a date when all NHS boards will reach their target share.

NHS inform is a NHSScotland service, hosted by NHS24.

NHS24 provides online information for people who are symptomatic and provides access to a self help guide which assists the public to be signposted to the most appropriate level of care. In addition, NHS24 provides corporate information and information on national campaigns (e.g. Be Ready for Winter and Know Who to Turn To).

In contrast, NHS inform is a single gateway to the provision of quality assured health and social care information across a range of health and wellbeing topics.

NHS inform makes use of the existing NHS24 national telephony and technology infrastructure and benefits from being hosted by an organisation already leading in health information management and patient care.

The launch of NHS inform took place as part of NHS24''s Annual Review and therefore incurred minimal costs of less than £50.00.

Information has been drawn from NHS24 and NHS Choices (a comparable website). Other content is still under construction and is being developed in partnership with organisations such as NHS Health Scotland and NHS Education for Scotland, as well as third sector organisations. The Scottish Government Health Directorates will also contribute as necessary.

The NHS inform team has been working in partnership with NHS Education for Scotland (NES) to integrate the Health Information Plus portal for all public facing health information material.

NES has recently taken a decision to redirect the public to NHS inform as the single national resource for quality assured health information. The Health Information Plus portal has not yet been fully integrated in the NHS inform website, but work to do so is ongoing.

The number of places provided to new entrants to the Foundation Training programmes in (a) 2008-09 and (b) 2009-10 has remained at approximately 800.

The Scottish Government does not provide funding to the Samaritans for its telephone helpline and has never done so previously.

The projects approved to outline business case stage but which have yet to reach full business case stage are as follows:

NHS Board	Project	Capital Value £ million
NHS Grampian	Modernisation of Primary Health and Community Care Services in Forres	12.2
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde	Modernisation and Redesign in Alexandria	20.8
NHS Highland	Day Surgery Centre at Raigmore Hospital	13.9
NHS Lothian	Reprovision of the Royal Hospital for Sick Children	148.0

 

The intake target for new entrants to pre-registration nursing and midwifery programmes remains at 3,060 for the academic session 2010-11. Decisions for 2011-12 will be taken in due course.