Chamber and committees

It should be noted that not all NHSScotland staff that reach the average retirement age will retire as there is no legal requirement for them to do so.

Under this Government, the number of Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS) staff has increased by 423.4 WTE, or 11.1 per cent. This includes a 10.6 per cent increase in Paramedics. SAS will use increases in its funding to recruit an additional 300 ambulance staff over the next five years.

It should be noted that not all staff that reach the average retirement age will retire as there is no legal requirement for them to do so.

Under this government, NHSScotland has the highest staffing levels ever, with record numbers of nurses and midwives and consultants.

Published information on NHSScotland staffing levels can be found on the workforce statistics website at:

http://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Workforce/Publications/data-tables.asp

Information on how many mental health professionals have been employed in A&E departments is held by each individual health board.

The number of consultant clinical radiologists across NHS Scotland has increased by 52.1 whole time equivalent (WTE) to a record high of 324.0 WTE – a 19.2 per cent increase since September 2010. Any fluctuation in vacancies is linked to our efforts to increase capacity by recruiting even more staff.

Detail on the establishment of clinical radiologists is available on the Information Services Division website:–

http://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Workforce/Publications/data-tables.asp

Information is provided in the following tables on the total number of continuous inpatient stays as well as the number of emergency readmission continuous inpatient stays within 28 days.

A)

The number of continuous inpatient stays for medical specialties by month and NHS Board of Residence.

Source: SMR01, ISD Scotland

The number of emergency readmission continuous inpatient stays within 28 days for medical specialties by month and NHS Board of Residence.

Source: SMR01, ISD Scotland

B)

The number of continuous inpatient stays for surgical specialties by month and NHS Board of Residence.

Source: SMR01, ISD Scotland

The number of emergency readmission continuous inpatient stays within 28 days for surgical specialties by month and NHS Board of Residence.

Source: SMR01, ISD Scotland

Note: All discharges (defined as a continuous stay in hospital), which meet the selection criteria, were included in the analysis. Each discharge was compared with the next admission to hospital for the same patient. If this subsequent admission occurred within 28 days of the date of discharge for the previous hospital stay and was coded as an emergency admission, it was selected as a relevant readmission. Cases were excluded from the analysis if the patient died within 28 days of discharge. The figures include readmissions within 28 days whether or not the readmission was related to the previous hospital stay.

The Scottish Government captures unmet need in two main ways:

1) Unmet need in treatment

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that anyone contacting their GP surgery has guaranteed access to a GP, nurse or other healthcare professional within 48 hours.

The performance measure for this standard is measured by the Health and Care Experience Survey.

A further standard on advance booking measures the percentage of patients reporting that they could book more than two days in advance.

The performance measure for this standard is also measured by the Health and Care Experience Survey.

2) Unmet need at a population level

The entrenched differences in health outcomes across the Scottish population are well documented and the Scottish Health Survey supplements detailed morbidity and mortality data collected by NHS Scotland.

There are no plans to develop further recording systems for GP services.

This information is not held centrally however this information may be available from The Royal College of General Practitioners.

The Practice Team Information (PTI) dataset of GP practices captured READ diagnostics codes for individual patients that provide an insight into multimorbidities. The PTI dataset was a survey of around 70 practices that ran until 2012-13.

The Scottish Government, working collaboratively with NHS National Services Scotland, is developing the Scottish Primary Care Information Resource (SPIRE) to replace PTI. This will enable the extraction of data from GP practices where those practices agree to participate. SPIRE is being deployed across Scotland during 2016-17.

SPIRE is able to extract all relevant available data from GP practices, including diagnostics and drugs codes and thus provide information on multimorbidity.

The Scottish Government, working collaboratively with NHS National Services Scotland, is developing the Scottish Primary Care Information Resource (SPIRE). This will enable the extraction of data from GP practices where those practices agree to participate. SPIRE is being deployed across Scotland during 2016-17.

The project benefits are expected to encourage practices and patients to participate, thus enabling NHS organisations and approved researchers to use SPIRE in ways that can help everyone in Scotland. For example:

Supporting research into new treatments;

Planning services and care for patients with particular conditions;

Responding to major public health issues like a flu epidemic;

Improving the provision of health and care to vulnerable groups; and

Developing knowledge about the uptake of medicines.

The information requested is not held centrally.

However, data on the number of people aged 65 and over who are living with diabetes, broken down by NHS board, and the total number of people aged 60 and over diagnosed with diabetes in each year since 2010 is published annually in the Scottish Diabetes Survey. The survey can be accessed at:

http://www.diabetesinscotland.org.uk/Publications.aspx?catId=3.

The most recent survey data was published in 2014. The report for 2015 is due to be published in the spring of 2016.