Chamber and committees

While the actions outlined by the Cabinet Secretary on 4 June do not include examination of the recruitment and retention of volunteer car drivers, the Scottish Ambulance Service will be reviewing their Patient Transport Strategy over the coming months and this will include the Volunteer Car Service.

The development of the action plan to eliminate the rostered single manning of traditional double crewed accident and emergency ambulances will include consideration of shift patterns and on-call periods.

The Scottish Executive does not provide direct support to local community based projects. However, local voluntary organisations can apply to the NHS board in their area for grant funding under section 16b of the National Health Service (Scotland) Act 1978. As funding is limited applications will be considered on their merit and against all of the applications received.

I also refer the member to the answer to question S3W-10474 on 10 March 2008. 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/webapp/wa.search.

While this is an operational matter for the Scottish Ambulance Service, it has advised me that the factors that will be taken in to account will be the costs of fuel and the costs of maintaining vehicles.

While this is an operational matter for the Scottish Ambulance Service, they have assured me that the current rates, last reviewed in May, cover the costs. The Scottish Ambulance Service will now be reviewing the rates on a monthly basis to ensure this continues to be the case.

However, given the continuing increases in fuel costs, I would expect to see the rates for volunteer ambulance drivers to increase in light of these reviews.

This is a matter for NHS boards. It is understood, however, that taxis may be used under specific circumstances. For instance some areas co-ordinate the use of local taxis under contract arrangements to bring people in to the out-of-hours service if they are unable to travel by their own means and do not require ambulance transport. This ensures that patients can get to a treatment outwith the times covered by community or voluntary car schemes and avoids inappropriate use for emergency ambulances.

I refer the member to the answer to question S3W-10474 on 10 March 2008. 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/webapp/wa.search.

Standardised death rates per 1,000 population for individual NHS board areas can be found in Vital Events Reference Table 1.3, which is available from the GROS Website via this address:

http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk/statistics/publications-and-data/vital-events/vital-events-reference-tables-2006/section-1-summary.html

The other information requested is given in the first table below. It should be noted that:

some of the figures may not provide a reliable indication of the normal level of mortality (they could be subject to large percentage year-to-year fluctuations because they are based on small numbers of deaths, as shown in the second table below);

n-a indicates not applicable - none of the parts of Scotland which fall within the specified quintile are included in that particular NHS board''s area.

Standardised Death Rates and Numbers of Deaths Registered in Scotland in 2006 - by NHS Board Area¹ and SIMD Quintile²

Standardised Death Rate per 1,000 Population3
SIMD Quintile	Highland4	Grampian	Western Isles	Orkney	Shetland	Scotland
1	13.8	14.5	n-a	n-a	n-a	14.2
2	11.5	12.0	11.1	8.5	12.9	11.8
3	9.9	10.4	9.3	11.8	9.2	10.6
4	9.2	9.9	7.7	10.3	8.6	9.5
5	8.1	8.4	n-a	6.6	5.7	8.0

 

Number of Deaths5,6
SIMD Quintile	Highland	Grampian	Western Isles	Orkney	Shetland	Scotland
1	313	431	n-a	n-a	n-a	13,349
2	684	817	241	9	22	12,440
3	1,326	1,386	92	107	120	11,304
4	867	1,424	7	103	59	10,104
5	236	1,188	n-a	12	2	7,896

Notes:

1. Deaths of Scottish residents are counted on the basis of the addresses of their usual residences, as recorded when their deaths were registered; deaths of non-residents are counted on the basis of where they died.

2. The Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) is produced using a range of statistical information for each of the datazones in Scotland, which have 500-1,000 residents each. For Scotland as a whole, quintile 1 contains the most deprived 20% of datazones, and quintile 5 contains the least deprived 20% of datazones, when classified on the basis used for the SIMD; for the NHS boards, the figures for each quintile were produced from the data for those parts that are in each SIMD quintile. As a result, a NHS board may not include any of the datazones which fall into a particular quintile, or the figures shown may have been produced from the data for considerably more, or less, than 20% of the NHS board.

3. These figures were produced by using the distribution by age of the overall Scottish population for 2006. That is the same method as was used to produce the standardised death rates which appear in Table 2 of Scotland''s Population 2006.

4. The new Highland NHS board area, i.e. including parts of the former Argyll and Clyde NHS board area.

5. The total number of deaths from which the standardised death rate was calculated. This may be small because only a small proportion of a NHS board''s area was in a particular SIMD quintile: if so, the standardised death rate for a single year might not provide a reliable indication of the normal level of mortality because there could be large year-to-year percentage changes in the number of deaths. For example, if a particular quintile tended to have around 100 deaths per year, it would not be surprising if its figures fluctuated by 10-20% between one year and the next.

6. The sum of the figures for all the quintiles may differ slightly from the published total number of deaths for a NHS board''s area. There may be a number of reasons for this: for example, some of the datazones used in the SIMD might not fit properly within the boundary of the NHS board area, or corrections may have been made to some of the underlying data after the published figures were produced.

We are currently in the process of agreeing single outcome agreements (SOAs) for 2008-09 with all 32 councils. We aim to complete this process by 30 June 2008 and, subject to agreement with councils, all finalised agreements will be made publicly available shortly thereafter. It would not be appropriate at this stage of the process to comment on specific areas of focus within individual agreements, but we expect SOAs to reflect the priorities and agreed outcomes for each council and to include the relevant supporting indicators and targets.

I refer the member to the answer to question S3W-12602 on 12 May 2008. 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/webapp/wa.search.