Chamber and committees

For patients living north of Forfar a dedicated Rapid Response Unit (RRU) and an ambulance respond to an emergency call where the patient has a suspected heart attack. Clinical assessment and ECG recordings are taken and transmitted by telemedicine link to Ninewells accident and emergency. A senior clinician at Ninewells accident and emergency analyses the ECG recordings and advises the Scottish Ambulance Service personnel whether or not to administer a thrombolytic agent. Following thrombolysis the patient is transferred by ambulance to Ninewells allowing the RRU to remain in Angus.For patients living south of Forfar a "scoop and run" service operates whereby patients are taken immediately by ambulance to Ninewells. The different services ensure that Clinical Standards Board for Scotland standards for "door to needle time" are achieved throughout the whole of Angus.

The Rapid Response Unit (RRU) is a key component of the Community Thrombolysis Service. The RRU is permanently on-call for patients living north of Forfar.

The Scottish Ambulance Service will deploy whichever resource is nearest to the patient suffering from chest pains, whether that is the cardiac response unit (CRU) or one of the accident and emergency ambulances with the thrombolytic capability. Where the CRU is deployed, a back-up accident and emergency ambulance will also attend, to transport the patient to hospital once the CRU has assessed the patient's condition and administered any appropriate treatment.The CRU is not a 24-hour resource, and is only operational during peak times which have been identified through the analysis of relevant clinical data. If the service receives a call about a patient with chest pains when the CRU is not in operation - or when it is attending to another patient - one of the accident and emergency ambulances with the thrombolytic capability will be deployed. Over the period covered in question S1W-29008 (1 June 2002 to 31 August 2002), of the 76 patients attended to by the CRU, 11 received clot-busting drugs. Of the 47 attended to by an accident and emergency ambulance, two received clot-busting drugs. All 123 patients were admitted to hospital in compliance with ambulance service policy to transport to hospital all patients suffering from chest pains.

I refer the member to the answer given to question S1W-29905 today. 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/search_wa.

I refer the member to the answer given to question S1W-29905 today. All answers to written PQs are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/search_wa.

It is for VisitScotland to submit to Scottish ministers proposals for signing on a national tourist route. No such proposals have been submitted for this route.

No. The objections are for me to consider in terms of the Roads (Scotland) Act 1984.

For patients domiciled in Angus and encountering chest pain while in Angus the default position is for patients to be admitted to Ninewells Hospital, Dundee.

The Scottish Executive website is undergoing a programme of continuous development under the direction of the Web Editorial Board. The aim of this programme is to ensure that the website conforms to the Framework for Information Age Government Websites and adheres to the best practice guidance for government websites promulgated by the Office of the e-Envoy. A new search engine for the website is due to be implemented by the end of October. This will significantly enhance the present search facilities.The news section of the website has been significantly redeveloped over the last year, introducing additional features such as the Junior Executive pages and the use of multimedia. A news archive is also in operation and we plan, early next year, to integrate the current archive for First Minister's Questions, Media Briefings and Weekly Review material with the news archive. From November, we also plan to begin introducing new topic page sections and topic mini-home pages to aid navigation through the website. These will be based on themes rather than on departmental portfolios, and will link to the current news and publication listings on the website.The functionality for searching publications has recently been improved through a facility to order them by date, subject and title headings. There is also a keyword search facility and users can browse by subject, display the most recent publications, and order publications by title. The new site-wide search engine will further enhance users' ability to search for and retrieve publications.Our links strategy currently focuses on reciprocal links to other relevant public sector organisations and we have work in hand to develop that strategy further.We have just developed and introduced a new website publishing system to ensure that we collect metadata as specified by the e-Government Metadata Standard (e-GMS) and to enable the author to select the time and date for publication on to the website.

The information requested is not held centrally. Waste from many schools is collected by local authorities and may not be measured separately.