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The regulation of all health professionals will become the responsibility of the Scottish Parliament on independence. The Scottish Government will seek to work in continued cooperation with Westminster and the devolved administrations, to ensure that health professional regulation is maintained in the best interests of patient safety and the consistent treatment of healthcare professionals.

The Scottish Government will seek to maintain the current professional healthcare regulatory bodies, which are funded by fees from registrants, which will continue to operate in Scotland after independence.

The information requested is not available in the format requested.

This information is not held centrally.

This information is not held centrally.

Operating costs for health boards are published annually by ISD, and can be found in ISD publication R100T–expenditure and activity figures for the last five years, for Scotland and each health board:

http://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Finance/Costs/File-Listings-2013.asp

All prisoners receive a health check and can also self-refer to the GP at the health centre in prison, as in the community. A prisoner would not receive any specific assessment, as with the general population.

This information is not held centrally.

The policy on location of public sector jobs is driven by strategic estate management and focussed on making the best and most efficient use of space wherever that is available across the country.

One of the key achievements this year with the GP contract was to reduce the workload associated with bureaucracy, and that will continue to be a priority for the Scottish Government, whilst any proposed changes to the existing GP contract will continue to be subject to negotiations with Scottish General Practitioners Committee.

Whilst statutory responsibility for the provision of healthcare services rests with health boards and it is for each board to put in place those services that best meet the needs of their patient populations. There is a strong alignment between practices in areas of deprivation and the Scottish Government about how to improve the links between primary care and wider health, social and other services in order to deliver 2020 vision.

While we have some good examples of person centred, locality appropriate models of care, these have been driven by committed teams to address specific or local issues. We want to develop new integrated models of care at scale by converging our activity i.e. developing models of care that simultaneously improve person-centred care, improve team working around the needs of the individual, meet the needs of the locality, better address multi-morbidity, reduce inappropriate A&E attendance etc.

For example the Links Worker Programme, that was launched in May 2014, is a Scottish Government funded programme which aims to explore how the primary care team can support people to live well in their community, made up of two inter-related interventions: the provision of a practice attached links worker, and the development by the practice team of a links approach.

The Scottish Government through recognising the challenges in the national GMS contract in relation to practices whose patients face the greatest inequalities have also significantly altered the 2014-15 GMS contract to free those practitioners up to devote more time to the complex problems that their patients face.

The Scottish Government is also achieving a greater focus on targeting resources to most deprived areas by two routes. Firstly through better linking planning between NHS boards and local authorities through the community planning process and secondly we are ensuring our strategies have a clear focus on tackling inequalities.

I refer the member to the answer to question S4W-21438 on 5 June 2014. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/39875.aspx.

All changes to the Quality and Outcomes Framework and to the Minimum Practice Income Guarantee are made following consultation with GP representatives, and take into account the impact on the whole of general practice.

A review of the current Scottish Allocation Formula and variability of funding will be taken forward over the next few years, in consultation with the Scottish General Practitioners Committee, including agreeing any changes required to take better account of deprivation. The aim is to create a stable funding environment for the whole of general practice with a focus on moving towards the 2020 vision and strengthening primary health care teams in and around GP practices; addressing issues relating to caring for elderly/ deprived/rural populations.

The GP contract agreement for 2014-15 will also see a shift of around £36 million funding from the Quality Outcomes Framework into the core contract, to provide more funding stability for practices, removing bureaucracy and freeing up more GP time to spend on face to face patient care.