Chamber and committees

A project is currently being led by Scottish Natural Heritage and the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, on behalf of the National Species Reintroduction Forum, which involves a preliminary assessment of the feasibility and desirability of reintroducing a range of species, including capercaillie. The results will be published in early 2014.

Previously, reintroduction or translocation approaches to capercaillie conservation have been considered but not adopted because the Badenoch and Strathspey’s regional subpopulation size exceeds the minimum viable population size of 500 individuals and thus, with continued habitat management, should be self-sustaining. Regrettably none of the populations outwith the core Badenoch and Strathspey population exceed the minimum viable population. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Guidelines for Reintroductions and Other Conservation Translocations state that the “threat(s) that caused any previous extinction should be identified and removed or sufficiently reduced”. The precise reasons for capercaillie population declines are not fully understood and so reintroductions outwith the core population have not yet taken place.

Data for hospital treated self-harm is collected by Information Services Division but due to concerns around the robustness and consistency of data it is not yet of sufficient quality to publish.

There are 79 buildings on the Scottish Government estate. We have two defibrillators which we inherited following the absorption of an agency’s estate. The position on whether to install defibrillators elsewhere on the estate is kept under review.

We have no current plans to carry out a full review of the national concessionary travel scheme.

In January 2013 we reached agreement with the bus industry safeguarding concessionary travel for older and disabled people for the next two years. The agreement set the rates and budgets for reimbursing operators until March 2015. We will hold further discussions with the industry, in due course, on reimbursement arrangements for April 2015 onwards.

Transport Scotland has recently published independent research on card holder views on the scheme and its administration. Findings from the first year of the two year survey are very positive. The research will contribute to our continuing consideration of improvements to administration of the scheme. The report can be found at:

http://www.transportscotland.gov.uk/strategy-and-research/publications-and-consultations/j276390-00.htm.

Free bus travel is delivering one of the Scottish Government’s key commitments, one we believe brings important benefits for all our eligible older and disabled people.

This independent research gathered the views of card holders on the scheme and its administration. It is clear from the findings there is a high level of support for the scheme and that it is valued by those who use it.

We will use this research to find out how we can continually improve the scheme to ensure it makes a difference to people’s lives, particularly those who find the application process difficult for one reason or another.

To that end, Transport Scotland will work in partnership with local authorities and advocacy groups representing cardholders to develop guidance materials in more accessible formats and to ensure that customer services staff are well equipped to support both potential and existing scheme users.

The Scottish Intercollegiate Guidance Network (SIGN) has confirmed that the suggested ratio of 1 specialist heart failure nurse per 100,000 population has its origins with the British Cardiac Society, rather than SIGN.

We fully recognise the value of specialist heart failure nurses, not just because of the clinical care they provide patients, but also due to the skills and experience they can share with clinical colleagues. We want to ensure services NHS boards have the full spectrum of heart failure services in place to meet service demands posed by the increasing incidence of heart failure.

Whilst it is NHS boards’ responsibility to plan and deliver services, including specialist nursing services, taking account of national priorities and local needs, we are writing to boards to make them aware of the increasing prominence of the issue of heart failure specialist nursing services

The Directors of Nursing agreed on 28 June 2013 to review current approaches, future plans, common challenges and potential solutions - enabling sharing of best practice across regions and boards.

We anticipate this discussion will also allow boards to identify areas where additional guidance or support from the Scottish Government may be useful.

While it is NHS boards’ responsibility to plan and deliver services, including specialist nursing services, taking account of national priorities and local needs, we have committed to supporting heart failure services in the following ways:

We are writing to boards to make them aware of the increasing prominence of the issue of heart failure specialist nursing services.

We are working with the British Heart Foundation and Chest Heart and Stroke Scotland to bolster the training and expertise of health and social care staff through investing £150,000 in the development of a national Heart-E education programme which will provide online heart failure modules.

This summer we are establishing a Heart Failure Hub which will help us understand how we can better support heart failure nursing services.

The number of people in Scotland treated for an eating disorder, anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge eating in each NHS board area is not available centrally.

It is not possible to provide reliable estimates, for the requested age groups, of the number of people in Scotland who had a contact with a GP or practice nurse for these conditions due to the very small number of cases involved.

Some information is available from the Practice Team Information (PTI) scheme, which can provide national estimates of the number of people consulting either a GP or practice-employed nurse where an eating disorder was noted as one of the reasons for consulting. Other information is available on patients admitted to hospital but, because hospital admission is rare for these conditions, this will only relate to a small proportion of people treated for an eating disorder. People with eating disorders may however be seen in other settings, such as hospital outpatients or counselling services, for which detailed information is not available, therefore it is not possible to provide complete numbers from national data.

PTI records indicate reasons for consultation but this does not specify whether treatment was provided. The PTI sample covers approximately 6% of general practices in Scotland and their population is regarded to be broadly representative of Scotland as a whole in terms of their age, gender and deprivation profile. They cannot be used to estimate figures by individual NHS board area.

For the most recent three financial years for which PTI data is available, the estimated number of people aged 0 to 16 consulting either a GP or practice-employed nurse where an eating disorder was noted as one of the reasons for consulting is included in Table 1. A further breakdown by each of the specifically defined eating disorders is included in Table 2:

1. Based on data from 60, 59 and 59 PTI practices that submitted complete GP and practice nurse data for the years ending 31st March 2010, 2011 and 2012 respectively. Figures are standardised to the gender, age and deprivation distribution of the Scottish population.

2. These are estimates based on a sample of practices that may vary between years. The 95% confidence intervals (in parentheses) give an indication of the relative degree of certainty around the estimates. For relatively rare conditions the confidence intervals will be fairly large.

1. Based on data from 60, 59 and 59 PTI practices that submitted complete GP and practice nurse data for the years ending 31 March 2010, 2011 and 2011 respectively. Figures are standardised to the gender, age and deprivation distribution of the Scottish population.

2. These are estimates based on a sample of practices that may vary between years. The 95% confidence intervals (in parentheses) give an indication of the relative degree of certainty around the estimates. For relatively rare conditions the confidence intervals will be fairly large.

3. Some patients may have consulted for more than one type of eating disorder during the year and therefore the total number of patients seen for any eating disorder is slightly lower than the sum of patients seen for each individual eating disorder. Overlap is most likely where patients had a consultation for which only a general eating disorder code was recorded as well as a consultation for which a specific eating disorder was recorded.

Health Protection Scotland (HPS) publishes a weekly report which alerts the Scottish Government to any increase in numbers of e.coli cases. In addition, HPS publishes quarterly gastro-intestinal and foodborne infections data on numbers of e.coli O157, salmonella and campylobacter cases reported, and an annual surveillance report on V-tec incidents. The Scottish Government is provided with copies of these reports.

Scottish Minsters established the VTEC/E.coli O157 Action Plan Group which contains representatives from HPS, the Scottish Government, the Food Standards Agency, the Royal Environmental Health Institute for Scotland and other relevant stakeholders the groups remit is to recommend ways to reduce cases of E. coli O157 (the strand of E.coli that is most dangerous to humans in Scotland). The group has been tasked with producing an action plan which is due to report in the coming months.

Routine mandatory surveillance is carried out for Staphylococcus aureus bacteraemias and Clostridium difficile infections, and this is can be found on the following websites available from Health Protection Scotland (see following links).

Additional information on other types of infections is available from HPS’s Scottish National Point Prevalence Survey of Healthcare Associated Infection and Antimicrobial Prescribing 2011.

Further information is also contained in the last three Healthcare Associated Infection annual reports (web links attached) published by Health Protection Scotland:

Clostridium difficile Infections:

http://www.hps.scot.nhs.uk/haiic/sshaip/clostridiumdifficile.aspx?subjectid=79#ar

Staphylococcus aureus Bacteraemias:

http://www.hps.scot.nhs.uk/haiic/sshaip/publicationsdetail.aspx?id=30248

HAI prevalence surveys:

http://www.hps.scot.nhs.uk/haiic/sshaip/haiprevelancestudy.aspx

HAI annual report 2012 (published May 2013):

http://www.documents.hps.scot.nhs.uk/hai/annual-report/healthcare-associated-infection-annual-report-2012.pdf

HAI annual surveillance report 2011 (published May 2012):

http://www.hps.scot.nhs.uk/haiic/publicationsdetail.aspx?id=51462

HAI annual surveillance report 2010 (published May 2011):

http://www.hps.scot.nhs.uk/haiic/publicationsdetail.aspx?id=47876