Question reference: S6W-26679
- Date lodged: 4 April 2024
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Current status: Answered by Neil Gray on 23 April 2024
Question
To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of waiting times for clinical assessment for suspected hernias in NHS Lanarkshire.
Answer
Excessively long waits are, of course, unacceptable. We are working hard to drive down the longest waits, which have been exacerbated by the impacts of the global pandemic, to ensure all people receive the treatment they need as soon as possible.
The commitments set out in our £1bn NHS Recovery Plan support an increase in inpatient, day-case, and outpatient activity through the implementation of sustainable improvements and new models of care, and NHS Scotland’s Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CfSD) is working with Health Boards to ensure that they are able to continually identify new ways to increase capacity, and to respond to demand through service innovation and redesign.
CfSD programmes have developed strong clinically-led Specialty Delivery Groups (SDG), including one for General Surgery which is currently focused on Inguinal Hernia, Biliary Disease, and Emergency Laparoscopic and Laparotomy Scottish Audit (ELLSA) pathways.
SDGs promote multidisciplinary team working, and support local adoption of service improvement programmes and have supported several new and innovative pathway developments, many of which are now being successfully scaled up across Scotland, including Active Clinical Referral Triage (ACRT).
The NHS Golden Jubilee also continues to provide Health Boards, including NHS Lanarkshire, with capacity for key elective services, such as General Surgery, with patients treated on the basis of their clinical priority and length of wait.