Chamber and committees

The following table shows office-cancelled breast screening appointments, broken down by month from January 2020 until July 2021. It is important to note, however, that all of these office-cancelled appointments are reappointed as a matter of course and an invitation to screening sent to the participant. Where appointments are rescheduled in this way before a letter of invitation has been sent, the screening participant may be unaware their appointment has been cancelled and reappointed .

The data provided below was provided as management information and has not been subject to quality checks that would be applied in an official publication. Quality assured breast screening programme statistics are published annually by Public Health Scotland.

The following table shows the number of people who attended a breast screening appointment from January 2019 to July 2021. 2018-2019 data is provided as a baseline; as the programme operates on a 3 year basis, and as in some years the locations are further away from base sites, these figures are provided as an average. It is important to note that the 2020 and 2021 data provided was collected and used for management purposes for monitoring the recovery of the program and has not been subject to quality checks for official publication. Public Health Scotland publish breast screening programme statistics every year; the last publication was in May 2021 and the next publication is due in 2022.

The Scottish Government is not able to provide the information requested due to this level of data not being publically available. In particular, individual patients may be identifiable should such hospital level information be published.

Quarterly reports on Clostridioides difficile infection, Escherichia coli bacteraemia and Staphylococcus aureus bacteraemia are published, with the data broken down by Health Board, and are available her

Additionally, validated data on Covid-19 hospital acquired infection is published weekly, with information broken down by NHS Health Board to protect patient identity. This information can be accessed here.

Please find the requested information set out in the following table.

This government has seen a 54.2% increase in the consultant radiologist workforce (from 223.5 WTE in September 2006 to 344.6 WTE in March 2021). While information on numbers of radiologists according to specialist cancer fields is not centrally held, the numbers of Clinical Radiology Consultants currently employed in each NHS Board, including Doctors in Training, are as set out in the following table:

NHSScotland Clinical Radiology Consultants, staff in post by NHS Board in Whole Time Equivalent (WTE) including Doctors in Training.

Data on diagnosis of sepsis by age, gender and location can be found at:

https://publichealthscotland.scot/publications/acute-hospital-activity-and-nhs-beds-information-annual/acute-hospital-activity-and-nhs-beds-information-annual-annual-year-ending-31-march-2020/ .

At present the Scottish Government has no plans to publish data on people affected by sepsis, broken down by ethnicity.

Following clinical advice, and in agreement with stakeholders, we will not be running a sepsis awareness campaign while the COVID-19 public awareness campaign continues.

We are aiming to re-start the annual sepsis public awareness campaign in 2022. In the meantime we are in discussion with sepsis charities around how we can support them in other ways to raise awareness of sepsis.

Cancer continues to be a top priority for this Government. On 28 June I announced £10 million of funding to support cancer waiting times improvements during 2021-22. This funding will support targeted diagnostic activity, including for breast cancer. We have also provided five mobile MRI scanners and four mobile CT scanners to increase diagnostic capacity across NHS Scotland.

The Scottish Cancer Registry, hosted by Public Health Scotland, collects information on registrations for primary cancers. It does not hold information on secondary cancers.

There is work ongoing to develop systems for the routine collection of secondary cancer data, including secondary breast cancer. However, validation of these systems would require clinical time that is being focussed on seeing patients as we continue to prioritise cancer in the NHS. Any national system for the routine collection of secondary breast cancer would take several years to produce the first tranche of data. The Scottish Government’s National Cancer Plan has committed up to £114.5m until March 2023 which will drive a range of improvements across all cancer services.