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Officials have provided a report on the quarterly statistics published by ISD on waiting times. These reports include information on the number of patients who are socially unavailable at the census date that the publication relates to and compares it with the position in the previous quarter.

The specific information requested is published by ISD Scotland and can be found on their website at the following link:

http://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Waiting-Times/Publications/data-tables.asp.

Those patients covered by Scottish Government guarantees are set out in guidance issued by the Scottish Government in August 2012. These documents are available at the following links:

www.sehd.scot.nhs.uk/mels/CEL2012_32.pdf

www.sehd.scot.nhs.uk/mels/CEL2012_33.pdf

Urgency of all referrals is judged by the referrer. Referrals for diagnostic tests are prioritised according to clinical need and irrespective of the source of referral.

The Scottish Government has set two standards for patients diagnosed with cancer.

The first, is that patients who have been urgently referred with a suspicion of cancer or are referred from one of the national cancer screening programmes, should begin treatment within 62 days.

The second standard, is that patients diagnosed with cancer and irrespective of the route of referral, should begin treatment within 31 days from the date that the decision to treat was agreed with the patient.

Patient breaches out with these waiting times standards are considered unacceptable unless for compelling clinical reasons.

The operation of the treatment time guarantee is contained in the Patient Rights (Scotland) Act 2011, in the treatment time guarantee regulations and directions as well as the guidance issued by the Scottish Government in August 2012. Links to the Regulations and Directions are:

www.sehd.scot.nhs.uk/mels/CEL2012_17.pdf.

The guidance on the treatment time guarantee can be found at:

http://www.sehd.scot.nhs.uk/mels/CEL2012_32.pdf.

The Scottish Government expects NHS boards to ensure they comply with the law for each individual patient.

The information requested is not available centrally.

When there is evidence that an NHS board is persistently failing to meet cancer waiting times standards, the NHS board is offered a programme of performance support. This programme is tailored and may involve one or more of the following:

weekly monitoring of performance against standards;

evidence that breach analyses are being carried out and that resulting action is being taken;

diagnostic on-site visits by a support team to identify improvement opportunities and facilitate pathway redesign where necessary;

sign posting to other NHS boards where there are examples of good practice that have resulted in sustained above standard performance.

This support is usually continued until the NHS board has consistently achieved the cancer waiting times standards.

Performance support programmes consider the whole healthcare system, to ensure that a focus on the area of concern does not adversely affect other parts of the healthcare system.

NHS boards have received the following in-year funding amounts over the last six years:

Over the course of a financial year, the Scottish Government Health and Social Care Directorate will typically make around 1,200 in-year allocations to NHS boards which cover a wide variety of reasons. These allocations can be made to one specific board, for example if there is a public health project being piloted in one board area, or to all boards such as funding to cover the costs of the general medical services contract or waiting times funding.

The Scottish Government has undertaken exploratory work to inform the review of the National Care Standards and will launch a consultation in the first half of 2013. The consultation will seek views on the proposed approach to the review, the actual review process and its timing.

Each NHS board has received an appropriate amount of funding from the Scottish Government in each of the last six years and therefore no board has been either over or under funded in that time period.