- Asked by: Sandesh Gulhane, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Monday, 14 October 2024
Submitting member has a registered interest.
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Current Status:
Answered by Neil Gray on 31 October 2024
To ask the Scottish Government by what means and metrics it assesses its own performance in delivering primary care services.
Answer
Scottish Ministers are responsible for securing the provision of general medical, general dental and general ophthalmic services, and of pharmaceutical services.
Health Boards have a duty to provide those services in accordance with regulations.
Each set of regulations makes its own requirements of the contractors providing various primary care services. General Medical Services contractors, for example, must respond to undifferentiated presentations; patients who are ill or believe themselves to be ill and require diagnosis. This is necessarily a matter of judgement and the regulations do not set targets or particular goals for GP practices. By comparison, routine dental and ophthalmic examinations take place at intervals set by the Scottish Government in accordance with clinical best practice guidelines.
- Asked by: Sandesh Gulhane, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 16 October 2024
Submitting member has a registered interest.
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Current Status:
Answered by Neil Gray on 31 October 2024
To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to reports that the wait time for urgent neurology referrals at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow is now 50 weeks.
Answer
We know that some people are waiting too long for treatment, and we remain determined to provide the necessary support to drive improvements in waiting times. Across NHS Scotland, patients who require urgent care continue to be prioritised across services.
NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde have confirmed the average waiting time for an urgent neurology new outpatient appointment at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH) is currently 20 weeks, however there are a small number of patients whose waiting time will be markedly longer than average due to an upgrade of their status from routine to urgent.
The Board have recruited additional consultants to the service which will deliver additional capacity at the QEUH site for general Neurology waits. They have also implemented Patient Focused Booking (PFB) into Neurology services to ensure optimum use of outpatient capacity and additional headache slots are being supported by GPs with special interest (GPSI), helping to free-up the consultant team to focus on general neurology longest waits.
More widely, NHS Scotland’s Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CfSD) has developed a strong clinically-led Specialty Delivery Groups (SDG) for Neurology which promotes multidisciplinary team working, and supports local adoption of service improvement programmes. The Neurology SDG has strong links with the National Advisory Committee for Neurological Conditions and includes third sector representation. The group has made considerable progress implementing Active Clinical Referral Triage (ACRT) pathways and Discharge Patient Initiated Review (PIR), helping to free-up capacity across NHS Scotland and support sustainable solutions for the future.
- Asked by: Sandesh Gulhane, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 30 October 2024
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Current Status:
Taken in the Chamber on 6 November 2024
To ask the Scottish Government by what date it expects all farmers to receive
payment through the Basic Payment Scheme.
Answer
Taken in the Chamber on 6 November 2024
- Asked by: Sandesh Gulhane, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Monday, 14 October 2024
Submitting member has a registered interest.
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Current Status:
Answered by Jenni Minto on 30 October 2024
To ask the Scottish Government what guidance it has given to NHS boards on the implementation of the National Headache Pathway.
Answer
The National Headache Pathway sets out key principles of best practice headache management. NHS boards have flexibility to implement this in a way that is appropriate to their local circumstances. Representatives from all boards were consulted throughout the pathway’s development.
A pathway measurement framework is being used by the NHS Scotland Centre for Sustainable Delivery Neurology Speciality Delivery Group, and boards are asked to update quarterly on the implementation of published pathways and provide data, where available, against a number of agreed metrics.
NHS Education for Scotland Pharmacy also hosted a webinar in September 2024 to provide guidance to pharmacy staff on the assessment, support and management of people living with migraine in line with the Scottish National Headache Pathway.
- Asked by: Sandesh Gulhane, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Monday, 14 October 2024
Submitting member has a registered interest.
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Current Status:
Answered by Neil Gray on 29 October 2024
To ask the Scottish Government, in light of reports that public data availability in relation to primary care services is limited because these services are mostly delivered by sub-contractors, what steps it would consider taking to facilitate greater data (a) collection and (b) publication in relation to primary care service (i) delivery and (ii) outcomes, in order to enable improved accountability and identification of any potential issues.
Answer
The Scottish Government is willing to consider any steps that might usefully and proportionately allow us to improve the data collected about primary care services and which could be used to improve those services. Any consideration of steps would be done in collaboration with the representative bodies of our contractor groups.
- Asked by: Sandesh Gulhane, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Monday, 14 October 2024
Submitting member has a registered interest.
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Current Status:
Answered by Neil Gray on 29 October 2024
To ask the Scottish Government, in light of reports that Public Health Scotland collects A&E data by more detailed categories than are published, such as by patient triage category, whether it will consider asking Public Health Scotland to expand the details in its regular A&E publications.
Answer
There are no immediate plans to ask Public Health Scotland (PHS) to expand the content within their Accident and Emergency publications.
Due to data quality and completeness issues, PHS do not publish information on the full list of data items in the A&E dataset, including patient triage category as it would not provide an accurate national picture or meaningful comparisons between NHS Boards.
We continue to work with PHS to ensure that A&E reporting guidance can be applied as consistently as possible across NHS Scotland and publication of data is subject to the necessary data quality and completeness standards being met.
- Asked by: Sandesh Gulhane, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 03 October 2024
Submitting member has a registered interest.
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Current Status:
Answered by Jenni Minto on 28 October 2024
To ask the Scottish Government, when it was initially conceived, whether a stated aim of minimum unit pricing was to reduce the consumption of alcohol among hazardous and harmful drinkers, and, if so, whether this aim has changed, and for what reason.
Answer
The aim of Minimum Unit Pricing (MUP) of alcohol is to reduce health harms caused by alcohol consumption by setting a floor price below which alcohol cannot be sold. In particular, it targets a reduction in consumption of alcohol that is considered cheap, relative to its strength. It aims to reduce both the consumption of alcohol at population level and, in particular, those who drink at hazardous and harmful levels. In doing so, it aims to reduce alcohol related health harms among hazardous and harmful drinkers, and contribute to reducing harm at a whole population level.
The aim of MUP remains the same as stated at the Bill's introduction in 2011.
- Asked by: Sandesh Gulhane, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 03 October 2024
Submitting member has a registered interest.
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Current Status:
Answered by Jenni Minto on 28 October 2024
To ask the Scottish Government whether minimum unit pricing has reduced the consumption of alcohol among hazardous and harmful drinkers.
Answer
Public Health Scotland's (PHS) independent evaluation of Minimum Unit Pricing (MUP) of alcohol estimated that our world-leading policy reduced wholly alcohol-attributable deaths by 13.4% and was likely to have reduced hospital admissions wholly attributable to alcohol by 4.1%.
There was strong and consistent evidence of a reduction in alcohol consumption following MUP implementation, and that the reduction in consumption was driven by the heaviest purchasing households, leading to the conclusion that MUP was well targeted. As MUP was estimated to have resulted in a decrease in alcohol-attributable deaths and hospital admissions related to chronic conditions, the evaluation took this as further evidence to suggest that MUP has reduced consumption in those that drink at hazardous and harmful levels.
Overall, the evidence supports that MUP has had a positive impact on health outcomes, including alcohol-related health inequalities.
- Asked by: Sandesh Gulhane, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 02 October 2024
Submitting member has a registered interest.
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Current Status:
Answered by Neil Gray on 22 October 2024
To ask the Scottish Government, regarding the Coroner's Regulation 28 report, Susan Pollitt: Prevention of Future Deaths Report, dated 31 July 2024, what consideration it has given to the Coroner's "Matters of Concern" in relation to the role and increased use of Physician Associates and Anaesthesia Associates in NHS Scotland's workforce.
Answer
The Scottish Government is aware of the concerns raised by the Coroner in respect of this unfortunate case. We will await the responses of the recipients named in the report to help inform any future actions that may be applicable to Scotland, and will continue to work with stakeholders across the UK on matters of national scale.
The Anaesthesia Associates and Physician Associates Order 2024 was passed by the Scottish Parliament on 31 January 2024. It will bring the roles into statutory regulation for the first time when it comes into force on 13 December of this year, addressing one of the key concerns of the Coroner.
In the meantime, extant Scottish Government guidance to NHS Scotland Boards makes clear that all Physician Associates must be registered on the appropriate managed voluntary register. That guidance also recognises the importance of ensuring that patients are properly advised that they are being treated by a Physician Associate and not a doctor.
Building on the above, the Scottish Government will continue to work with partners through its Medical Associate Professionals (MAPs) Programme Board to consider appropriate utilisation of the role within NHS Scotland, taking into account developments over the coming months.
- Asked by: Sandesh Gulhane, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Monday, 30 September 2024
Submitting member has a registered interest.
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Current Status:
Answered by Neil Gray on 15 October 2024
To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to NHS Lothian’s account of the reasons that the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh had a hospital standardised mortality ratio (HSMR) more than two standard deviations above the Scotland-wide average, in light of NHS Lothian not attributing excess mortality to any deficiencies in care provision and reports that multiple randomly selected mortality cases for the review had experienced problems in the provision of their care, which, if fixed, could have resulted in a different outcome.
Answer
The latest release by Public Health Scotland (PHS), providing information on Hospital Standardised Mortality Ratios (HSMRs), for the period April 2019 to March 2024 is available via the PHS website. (Hospital Standardised Mortality Ratios - April 2023 to March 2024 - Hospital Standardised Mortality Ratios - Publications - Public Health Scotland).
These statistics are updated on a quarterly basis and reflect the HSMR for the latest 12-month reporting period, whilst crude mortality data is presented by quarter and month to show trends. For the period April 2023 to March 2024, the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh (RIE) is within two standard deviations of the Scotland-wide average for their HSMR, and no hospital in Scotland had a significantly higher standardised mortality ratio than the national average.
NHS Lothian’s January 2024 HSMR report explored the reasons behind the higher ratio of the standardised mortality measure at RIE and specifically to understand if there is any evidence of avoidable mortality.
The report identified 4 cases where a different plan and/or delivery of care may have resulted in a different outcome for patients, but the use of ‘may’ identifies this classification as hypothetical in nature, it is impossible to know if a different care plan would have resulted in a different outcome. Furthermore, the report specifically advised the Healthcare Governance Committee that there is no clear current evidence of avoidable mortality in any of the cases considered.
