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The Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service (SNBTS) already operates an appointment system at its five main donor centres. SNBTS is committed to improving this system and will assess donor feedback with a view to offering the facility more widely if demand is shown to exist. However, an appointment system does not appeal to all donors, and SNBTS is also committed to retaining its "walk in" facility.

The information is shown in the table below.

Number of Children and Adults in Scotland Registered with the General Dental Service (GDS)

Financial Year	Child Registrations	Adult Registrations
1990-91	423,104	1,065,303
1991-92	620,696	1,864,835
1992-93	626,645	1,901,623
1993-94	632,720	1,861,265
1994-95	623,874	1,849,884
1995-96	635,945	1,942,469
1996-97	637,743	2,027,245
1997-98	710,064	2,034,688
1998-99	726,124	1,891,328
1999-2000	754,545	1,972,310

Notes:

1. Registering of patients with dentists was first introduced when a new dental contract came into force in October 1990. During 1990-91 registrations were under-counted as patients were only added to the dentists registered list when they visited a dentist after this date.

2. Prior to 1 September 1996 adult registrations lapsed after 24 months and child registrations lapsed at the end of the following calendar year unless the patients returned to the practice. This contributed to the fall in adult numbers between 1997-98 and 1998-99.

3. A new payment system for dentists was introduced in April 1999. Prior to this, records for new patients, patients registering after a period of being lapsed and patients whose information had been written or captured incorrectly were excluded from the registration figures and so some under-counting occurred.

The Practitioner Services Division of the Common Services Agency went live in October 2000 with a new data capture, validation and pricing system for processing pharmacists' claims for payment in respect of dispensed prescriptions. Software for processing ophthalmic claims is being developed and that system is expected to go live early next year.

The Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service (SNBTS) has already established six locality based collection teams throughout Scotland, and hold 2,000 sessions per year in communities and workplaces. SNBTS is currently reviewing its National Collection programme to assess the feasibility of establishing further teams.

The project entitled "Carriage on hypervirulent meningococci before and after introduction of serogroup C conjugate polysaccharide vaccine in the UK" is due to submit a progress report in November 2000 with the possibility of the study being extended until the end of October 2002.

Scottish Healthcare Supplies (SHS), a Division of the Common Services Agency with responsibility for arranging central contracts for the NHS in Scotland, is committed to ensuring that any goods, equipment or services placed on contract are safe, of optimal quality and represent good value for money. SHS has negotiated a wide range of national contracts for common usage, and these have generated substantial savings for the NHS in Scotland. The Scottish Executive continues to work to seek further improvements in this area.

The information is set out in the table below.¹ The general index of retail prices has been used to deflate the average gross ingredient cost into real terms, using 1995-96 as a baseline.

Average Gross Ingredient Cost of General and Proprietary Items Dispensed 1995-96 to 1999-2000

	Generic		Proprietary
Financial Year	Average cost per item £	Total cost of all items dispensed £	Average cost per item £	Total cost of all items dispensed £
1995-96	1.80	39,320,610	12.72	388,274,138
1996-97	2.01	48,201,533	13.54	407,937,513
1997-98	2.72	71,981,179	13.89	414,375,875
1998-99	2.63	74,064,879	14.41	427,385,527
1999-2000	3.66	105,354,734	15.07	455,592,429

Notes:

1. Excludes appliances, dressings, oxygen and unallocated items, which cannot be defined as generic or proprietary.

The table below gives the total number of prescription items dispensed, and the percentages of proprietary and generic products.¹

Information on dispensing details for branded products still on patent, and branded products for which a generic equivalent existed, is not recorded centrally and is not available in the form requested.

Prescription Items Dispensed in Scotland - 1995-96 to 1999-2000

	1995-96	1996-97	1997-98	1998-99	1999-2000
Total items dispensed	53,263,578	54,985,962	57,192,917	58,797,506	60,908,779
% dispensed as generic	41.72%	44.34%	47.01%	48.69%	49.49%
% dispensed as proprietary	58.28%	55.66%	52.99%	51.31%	50.51%

Notes:

1. Excludes appliances, dressings, oxygen and unallocated items, which cannot be defined as generic or proprietary.

Currently, the Community Health Index (CHI) number cannot be used as the sole identifier when GPs are making claims for item of service payments. Whilst GPs do currently use the CHI numbers to make claims for items of service, another form of identification is also required.

Establishing a serogroup for a case of meningococcal disease is straightforward if the organism itself has been isolated from the patient. However, it is good clinical practice for suspected cases to be given antibiotics as soon as possible, even before transfer to a hospital. In such cases, in particular where antibiotics have been successful, isolation of the organism is frequently impossible (around two thirds of the total) because the treatment makes the organism more difficult to extract.

Technical improvements in diagnostic techniques are being made all the time, and the level of submission of specimens to the Scottish Meningococcal Reference Laboratory which carries out such testing, has never been higher.