Chamber and committees

Providing high quality, person centred care for people towards the end of life is an important priority for the Scottish Government.

We want people to get the care and support that is right for them and enable them to stay in their local community for as long as possible. Our ambition to ensure people get the care that is right for them in a community setting is reflected in our budget this year, which provides investment of more than £700 million to support social care services and speed up the pace of integration. We are on track to deliver our commitment that more than 50% of frontline NHS spending will be shifted to community health services by the end of this Parliament.

Each NHS Board in Scotland has an executive responsibility to ensure safe and effective testing is carried out within its laboratories.

NHS virology laboratories carry out rigorous evaluations prior to the introduction of all the tests to ensure they are both sensitive and specific. Every test is performed using suitable controls to ensure it is performing as expected. In the case of serious infections such as HIV all reactive tests are further subjected to confirmation using additional tests. This is guided by nationally (UK) agreed processes.

All tests are subject to external quality assessment where results obtained from panels of specimens are compared to other laboratories across the UK and beyond which may use the same or a different manufacturer’s test. For further information see https://ukneqas.org.uk .

The whole quality process is overseen by the UK Accreditation Service (UKAS) using an accreditation process to the standard of ISO 15189, a standard which is currently met by all Scottish virology laboratories. Further information on the accreditation and a list of accredited organisations can be found on https://www.ukas.com .

The Scottish Government, along with the rest of the UK, is advised on all aspects of screening by the UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC), an independent expert advisory group who assesses screening programmes against a robust set of criteria, and based on evidence, the UK NSC recommend routine breast screening for women aged between 50 and 70. If a woman has symptoms which could be suspicious of cancer, she should raise this with her General Practitioner as soon as possible, regardless of her age.

We know that screening remains the best way to detect cancer early and help reduce health inequalities in cancer outcomes. Breast screening is a vital public service and plays an important role in detecting cancer at an early stage.

Our Programme for Government 2019-2020 commits to establishing a Women’s Health Plan to reduce inequalities in health outcomes that affect women, including reducing inequalities relating to cardiac disease. In order to inform and develop the Plan, key stakeholders have been invited to join a Women’s Health Group which will be chaired by the Chief Medical Officer. The first meeting is due to take place in February 2020.

We continue to implement our heart disease improvement plan, which sets out the priorities and actions that we will take to deliver improved prevention, treatment and care for all patients.

This information is not held centrally. The member may wish to contact each individual Health Board to obtain this information.

Information from a number of sources regarding the provision of workplace support across our health and social care services, is currently being considered on behalf of the Ministerial Short Life Working Group on Culture and Wellbeing, which I chair. The Group has a broad remit to examine and review existing provision, and will in due course publish a framework to support sustainable, longer-term cultural transformation.

One of the objectives of that framework will be to promote the implementation of practical strategies that ensure that all staff, regardless of their role or location have access to appropriate support services. An update to Parliament will be provided in the Spring, once the Short-Life Working Group has concluded its work.

The following table sets out NHS Scotland’s spend on both goods and services from other UK NHS bodies, as reported by NHS Boards in their annual accounts.

Details of NHS expenditure on general practice and dental services are made available each year in the annual NHS publication “Scottish Health Service Costs”, also known as the Cost Book. The latest available Cost Book is for 2018-19 and the report can be accessed at the following location: https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Finance/Publications/ .

The following table provides numbers of endoscopy procedures reported from inpatient, day case or outpatient settings from 2007 to 2018.

ISD publish waiting times for endoscopy as part of the Diagnostics Waiting Times publication. The data published gives the number of people who are still waiting at the end of each month, and does not provide the completed waiting times for this test. Performance against the 6 week standard is only available from quarter ending June 2009. These can be accessed at the following web site: https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Waiting-Times/Diagnostics/