Chamber and committees

The Scottish Arthroplasty Project was one of a number of initiatives under review by Information Services Division in light of funding pressures. However continued collection of information on the use of arthroplasty is a necessary part of our quality strategy at the present time and it has been decided to maintain this project.

The Scottish Arthroplasty Project was set up to provide anonymised individual consultant and aggregated service outcome data on patients undergoing elective joint replacement surgery throughout Scotland.

Information Services Division has confirmed that this information is not collected centrally since it would depend on the cause of failure of the operation.

The Scottish Government is committed to providing economic security for the public service workforce in these challenging times. In March 2011 it announced the continuation of the existing no compulsory redundancies agreement for a further year to 31 March 2012 and is committed to extending coverage to other parts of the public sector.

Scottish ministers have no statutory powers to intervene in local government staffing matters but the Scottish Government will continue to work with and support local authorities who want to provide the assurance of no compulsory redundancies, to their staff.

Whilst the government maintains its commitment to keeping services local, I have always been clear that patient safety and the quality of care remains my paramount concern.

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde’s decision has been informed by a review of paediatric neurosurgery and craniofacial surgery at the Southern General and Yorkhill Hospitals carried out by the Royal College of Anaesthetists in November 2010. A key recommendation of the review was to consolidate the paediatric neurological service at Yorkhill as an interim move, ahead of the relocation of the children’s hospital to the new south Glasgow hospital site in 2015.

It was the unanimous view of the Royal College review team that this interim change is necessary to provide the safest and most clinically appropriate service for children until the new hospital opens in 2015.

A number of outcomes have improved following the introduction of the project. These include reduced infection and dislocation rates as well as a reduction in the number of different prostheses used in NHSScotland.

This means that we will work with NHS employers in Scotland to fulfil our manifesto commitment to guarantee there will be no compulsory redundancies in the NHS. In this way security and certainty will be provided for thousands of households across Scotland who are already dealing with pressures on family budgets caused by rising prices and higher UK taxes such as VAT.

No. This is an interim move phased over the next 12 to 18 months prior to the opening of the new Royal Hospital for Sick Children on the new south Glasgow hospital site in 2015. The decision is based on the explicit recommendation of an independent expert clinical body and it is important to note that, this interim move aside, the service would always have been located at the New Southern General site from 2015.

The cost of NHS National Services Scotland support to the Scottish Arthroplasty Project in the financial year 2010-11 was £51,000.

Quarterly data on the number of staff employed by the Scottish Government is published at (see tables 6a and 6b):

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Labour-Market/PublicSectorEmployment/PSEwebtables/Q/forceupdate/on.

The latest time period for which data is published is Q4 2010 (end of December 2010). Data for Q1 2011 (end of March 2011) will be published on 15 June 2011.