Chamber and committees

The proportion of total claimantsby these age bands in October of each year from 1999 to 2005 is given in the tablesof Claimant Count by Parliamentary Constituencies 1999-2005, a copyof which has been placed in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. number38276).

The Executive maintains adatabase of IT spend approved by the Scottish Executive Information SystemsSteering Group (SEISSG).

Since 1999-2000 there havebeen no SEISSG approved projects with IT elements of greater than £50,000 wherecost exceeded the annual budget by over 50%.

(a) Nursing agency costs from 2000-01 to 2004-05 (earlier years are not available) broken down by NHS boards, as detailed in the national workforce unit’s report E13 were:

Table 1

(b) Costs for nursing bank staff from 1999-2000 to 2004-05 (earlier years are not available) as detailed in the national workforce unit’s report E16 were:

Table 2

One of the Partnership Agreement Commitments is to implement Nationally Co-Ordinated Nurse Bank Arrangements to assist nurse placement across Scotland, to improve patient services and cut costs of agency nursing.

The increase in the number of bank staff used is in line with recommendations made within the report and Action Plan of the Nationally Co-Ordinated Nurse Bank Arrangements project and reflects our policy on reducing the reliance on agency nurses in NHSScotland.

Effectively managed Nurse Banks allow NHS employers to deploy resources effectively and safely in light of service demands, while affording individual staff members improved flexibility in their employment that better meet work/life demands. Bank staff are employees of NHSScotland, are deployed by individual NHS employers to cover temporary nursing gaps and as such have access to training and career opportunities.

A project manager has been appointed to 2007, to take forward the 18 recommendations set out in the Nursing and Midwifery Workload and Workforce Planning report, which will impact on bank and agency usage.

A national contract for the provision of agency nurses, through the Best Procurement Initiative, (BPI) is in place. The BPI is part of NHSScotland’s agenda for modernising support services and is an important element of the Executive’s Efficient Government initiative aimed at delivering public services to the highest possible quality in Scotland. A contract was initially established in the West of Scotland in November 2003 and this was rolled out to the North and East of Scotland in November 2004. At February 2005, savings of £2.4 million had been achieved and it is anticipated that the contract will deliver savings of approximately £7 million per annum by 2006-07.

(c) Total agency costs for NHS boards as reported in the annual accounts of NHS Boards and Trusts are included in tables 3 and 4. This is defined as the gross cost of all payments to employment agencies for the provision of agency staff of all disciplines and is show in tables 3 and 4 below; these figures will not include nurse bank staff. No breakdown by NHS board is readily available for 1995-96 and 1996-97.

Table 3

A breakdown for each NHS board is available for the years 1997-98 to 2004-05 and is shown in the following table:

Table 4

Mobile Phones Purchased in Each Year

Information is not held centrally on the allocation of phones between Ministers, special advisors or officials, as this data is not recorded when phones are ordered.

The total number of mobile phones within the Executive which were reported as lost or stolen are as follows:

Mobile Phones Reported as Lost or Stolen in Each Year

The figures for both tables refer only to mobile phones procured through Scottish Executive contracts and not to other devices, such as personal digital assistants, which may include mobile phone functions.

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2005/09/infertility-consultation/current-service.

Limited information is available centrally on the number of in-patient/day case episodes where operations/procedures were not carried out following admission. Table 1 shows information on the number of in-patient and day case continuous spells in hospital where operations/procedures were cancelled following admission by NHS board of treatment, for calendar years 1997 to 2004. It is not possible to identify the type of operation that was cancelled therefore if a person had more than one cancelled operation it is not necessarily the same operation.

Operations can be cancelled due to various unforeseen pressures. Some examples of these are; an influx of emergency admissions, widespread staff sickness, theatre equipment failure or infection in wards.

On occasions, some patients may be sent home, following admission, when a planned procedure/operation has not been carried out. Some reasons for this include; patient being unfit for treatment due to illness (e.g. chest infection), having omitted to fast before admission, failing to follow pre-admission advice on medication, or where theatre time is unavailable due to unexpected complications arising in earlier theatre cases.

In setting out an initial response to Professor David Kerr’s report Building A Health Service Fit For The Future, I made it clear that I supported his proposals that we should stream planned care, separating it, where possible, from emergency care. I have asked the Regional Planning Groups to develop arrangements for streaming planned care that will reduce cancellations, increase predictability and workflow and reduce waiting times.

Table 1 - Cancelled Operations^1,2,3,4

Notes

1. These statistics are derived from data collected on discharges from non-obstetric and non-psychiatric hospitals (SMR01) in Scotland.

2. Cases where the patient was not admitted to hospital are not included.

3. Up to six diagnoses (one principal, five secondary) are recorded on SMR01 returns. All six diagnoses have been used to identify cancelled operations. The following code was used from the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Other Health Related Problems, tenth revision (ICD10): Z53; Persons encountering health services for specific procedures, not carried out. However, it should be noted that the use of this code may vary from hospital to hospital.

4. Number of cancelled operations was calculated by accumulating the number of spells in hospital in a calendar year where there was a Z53 diagnosis.

5. Complete data for 2005 are not yet available.

Following a review of the operation of the NHS Complaints Procedure carried out with the full involvement of patients and NHS staff, a new simpler, easier to understand procedure, which provides earlier access to the independent review of the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman, was introduced on 1 April 2005.

The emphasis of the new procedure is on listening to the comments and concerns the patients as they arise and dealing with them quickly and effectively. Can I Help You?, the guidance on the new procedure, can be found at:

http://www.show.scot.nhs.uk/publications/me/complaints/docs/1guidance010405.pdf.

A patient’s smoking status is not recorded centrally on most routine datasets and there are a large number of conditions which could be related to smoking, but which could also have other causes. However, peer reviewed accredited research has estimated that smoking accounts for 13,000 deaths per annum in Scotland and that a further 35,000 people are treated by the NHS for smoking-related diseases each year. The precise cost of smoking related diseases is difficult to ascertain, since cost data collected centrally from the National Health Service in Scotland cannot be attributed to individual disease. However, the cost to the NHS in Scotland of treating smoking related disease is estimated to be approximately £200 million per year.

Table 1 shows acute hospital discharges with a main diagnosis of ischaemic heart disease or malignant neoplasm of trachea, bronchus and lung, both of which are known to have an association with smoking.

Table 1: Acute Hospital (Non-Obstetric, Non-Psychiatric) In-Patient and Day Case Discharges with a Main Diagnosis¹ of Ischaemic Heart Disease or Malignant Neoplasm of Trachea, Bronchus and Lung²: Years Ending 31 March 1998 and 2005.

It is not possible to estimate the cost to the Scottish economy of such smoking related incidents.

(b) Alcohol-related conditions

Information is not available on the cost of treating patients for specific conditions such as those relating to the consumption of alcohol. The latest published information on the economic costs of alcohol to society can be found in Alcohol Misuse In Scotland: Trends And Costs - Final Report, dated October 2001. A copy of this report can be found by accessing:

http://www.alcoholinformation.isdscotland.org/alcohol_misuse/files/Catalyst_Full.pdf

I also refer the member to the answer to question S2W-20254 on 14 November 2005. This shows the combined figures for alcohol-related discharges from general acute and psychiatric hospitals during 1997-98 to 2001-02, and provides data for discharges from general acute hospitals only from 1997-98 to 2004-05. 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.