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Questions and answers

Parliamentary questions can be asked by any MSP to the Scottish Government or the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. The questions provide a means for MSPs to get factual and statistical information.

Written questions must be answered within 10 working days (20 working days during recess)
Other questions such as Topical, Portfolio, General and First Minister's Question Times are taken in the Chamber

Urgent Questions aren't included in the Question and Answers search. There is a SPICe fact sheet listing Urgent and emergency questions.

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Question reference: S4W-06413

Asked by: Dr Richard Simpson, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 30 March 2012
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 23 April 2012

To ask the Scottish Executive what steps have been taken (a) locally and (b) nationally to improve (i) understanding, (ii) monitoring and (iii) management of variation in emergency admission rates, other than those undertaken in the Integrated Resource Framework pilot.

The national goal in HEAT is to reduce the emergency admissions bed days rate for over 75s by at least 12% between 2009-10 and 2015-15 This spans the patient pathway, including work to reduce emergency admissions, to reduce lengths of stay in hospital, and to reduce delays in discharge from hospital. Scottish Government officials continue to work with boards to understand and monitor this issue.

NHS boards have set their annual trajectories through to 2014-15 within their local delivery plans, taking account of their local circumstances. It is expected that boards will work with local partners to ensure delivery according to their plans.

The Scottish Patients at Risk of Readmission and Admission (SPARRA), an algorithm developed by ISD, helps to predict a patient’s risk of being admitted to hospital as an emergency in a particular year. This data covers three sub-cohorts (frail elderly; long-term conditions, and younger emergency department) and is regularly distributed to NHS boards and used locally to identify people at risk of admission to hospital.

As a contribution to the development of alternatives to emergency admission at local level the Joint Improvement Team (JIT) is promoting an evidence-based Reshaping Care Pathway and associated self assessment for Reshaping Care Partnerships. The aim is to shift the balance of care from reliance on emergency hospital admission to preventative and proactive, integrated and anticipatory support in the community. This builds on the learning and progress made by boards through their improvement work for long term conditions, dementia and delayed discharge and complements the work led by QuEST to improve patient flow through acute care.

Question reference: S4W-06528

Asked by: Dr Richard Simpson, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 02 April 2012
Current Status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 19 April 2012

To ask the Scottish Executive how many patients have died as a result of contracting influenza after being admitted to hospital in each of the last three years.

Question reference: S4O-00913

Asked by: Dr Richard Simpson, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 18 April 2012
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 26 April 2012

To ask the Scottish Executive when it last met the chairs and chief executives of the territorial NHS boards and what issues were discussed.

Question reference: S4W-06423

Asked by: Dr Richard Simpson, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 29 March 2012
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 18 April 2012

To ask the Scottish Executive, further to the answer to question S3W-28614 by Nicola Sturgeon on 13 November 2009, how many of the seven rotas to which the derogation applied up to 31 July 2011 have since been given further derogation, and whether other rotas have been approved for fresh derogation since 2 November 2011.

All NHS boards with rotas subject to Working Time Regulations derogation were given the opportunity to apply for a further extension to these derogations before they expired on 31 July 2011. All declined this opportunity, and re-designed the rotas to meet the full limits of the Working Time Regulations. No further rotas have applied for derogation since, and the opportunity to do this has now expired.

All rotas for Doctors in Training in Scotland comply with the limits of the Working Time Regulations.

Question reference: S4W-06382

Asked by: Dr Richard Simpson, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 23 March 2012
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 18 April 2012

To ask the Scottish Executive, further to the answer to question S3W-13716 by Nicola Sturgeon on 10 June 2008, what reporting on patient experience it has (a) required of and (b) received from Information Services Division Scotland.

ISD carried out a piece of work to assess the quality of information captured by and used from New Ways (known as the Data Quality Assessment Project). There were four strands to the project: a case note review, an analysis of data from the national New Ways data warehouse, employee surveys and a patient survey. The objective of the patient survey was to assess whether the patient experience of arranging an outpatient appointment or hospital admission was consistent with New Ways rules and guidance.

The assessment covered patient episodes that took place in the first six months of 2008. A sample of patients was selected and 3,393 surveys were distributed, of which 999 were completed and returned.

The results from the project and recommendations to support the further improvement in the quality of data were reported to the Scottish Government in December 2008, distributed to NHS boards and the Executive Summary was published on the ISD website and is available at the following URL:

http://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Waiting-Times/Inpatient-Day-Cases-and-Outpatients/Data-Quality/DQA1%20Exec%20Summary%20Jan%2009.pdf.

Question reference: S4W-06732

Current Status: Withdrawn

Question reference: S4W-06385

Asked by: Dr Richard Simpson, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 23 March 2012
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 17 April 2012

To ask the Scottish Executive, further to the answer to question S3W-13716 by Nicola Sturgeon on 10 June 2008, what steps it has taken to ensure equity of experience of the New Ways waiting times system for (a) people with sensory problems, (b) people with learning difficulties, (c) people with literacy problems, (d) refugees, (e) immigrants, (f) travelling people and (g) people whose first language is not English.

NHS boards are not required to record data covering these particular patient groups through New Ways data collection.

It is for each health board, as a named public body in equality legislation, to have in place the mechanisms they require to assure they are compliant with their legislative requirements. This includes assessing the impact of policies and functions to ensure services are delivered fairly and equitably.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission is the regulatory body that ensures these requirements are met.

Question reference: S4W-06379

Asked by: Dr Richard Simpson, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 23 March 2012
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 17 April 2012

To ask the Scottish Executive what the reasons are for the (a) variation between and (b) monthly variation within NHS boards as shown in Appendix B of the report, Review of aspects of Waiting Times Management at NHS Lothian, other than those stated in the appendix, and whether the data for NHS (i) Greater Glasgow and Clyde and (ii) Grampian will be corrected.

Published waiting times statistics are based on the most up-to- date status of data extracted from local systems and submitted by NHS boards to ISD each quarter. Since publication follows in a timely manner, this means that the data can be updated from one publication to the next as NHS boards submit the most up to date status of each patient as their wait for treatment progresses. Therefore minor changes in the latest figures are expected until the patient has been seen and all data has been submitted to ISD.

Variation between NHS boards may happen where, for example, boards follow different schedules for submitting data or use different local IT systems. These factors are likely to affect the published figures in larger NHS board figures more so than for smaller NHS boards.

There are footnotes below the tables in Appendix B of the Review of aspects of Waiting Times Management at NHS Lothian report that explain some specific circumstances that have led to changes in published figures for unavailability (local IT system changes at NHS Grampian and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde). There have also been similar changes to IT systems recently in other boards. These IT changes are part of a roll out of a national Patient Management System across NHS boards.

The data in Appendix B of the report shows changes to unavailability figures that occurred between the initial and the subsequent quarterly publication. Unavailability figures for Grampian have now been submitted and are shown in the recent publication of waiting times statistics on 28 February. Submissions from Glasgow are in progress and expected to show updated unavailability figures in the next publication of waiting times figures at the end of May.

Question reference: S4W-06490

Asked by: Dr Richard Simpson, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 27 March 2012
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 17 April 2012

To ask the Scottish Executive, further to the answer to question S3W-39192 by Nicola Sturgeon on 10 February 2011, what the (a) maximum, (b) average and (c) median waiting time is for assessment of people referred to the Scottish Driving Assessment Centre.

Question reference: S4W-06380

Asked by: Dr Richard Simpson, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 23 March 2012
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 17 April 2012

To ask the Scottish Executive what monitoring of patient exclusions from waiting times it will put in place.

Patients should not be excluded from waiting times standards because of periods of unavailability – the patient’s waiting time clock should only be paused for the period of the unavailability and resume after that period. These patients remain on the waiting list and should be seen or treated within waiting time standards.

The Health Directorate will be closely monitoring the number of patients with a period of unavailability in each individual board area as part as their routine discussions on delivery of waiting times standards.

(a) Maximum waiting time	=	55.1 weeks
(b) Average waiting time	=	24.4 weeks
(c) Median waiting time	=	24.1 weeks