Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government convenes the Ministerial Strategic Group for Health and Community Care, which includes representation from Integration authorities, NHS Boards, local authorities, CoSLA, Royal Colleges, professional bodies and Third Sector organisations such as the Scottish Voluntary Sector Organisation and Community Care Providers Scotland.

Scottish Government officials are meeting with the Red Cross this month to discuss their report, and how it can inform national policy.

In response to allegations of bullying and harassment at St John’s Hospital in 2017, which included concerns around the misreporting of A&E statistics across NHS Lothian, the Chair of the Academy of Royal Colleges, Professor Derek Bell, carried out an independent review. The review was published by the Scottish Government on the 26 June 2018, and a full copy of the report can be found on our website https://www2.gov.scot/Topics/Health/Quality-Improvement-Performance/UnscheduledCare/Review-Whistleblowing-Allegation-NHSLothian

Following this and to ensure that the recommendations from the independent review were fully implemented and aligned to the national six essential actions improvement programme, we brought together an external group of experts to work with the senior executive management and local teams in NHS Lothian to oversee and support the implementation process. This group was chaired by Sir James Mackey.

This work, which was also supported by the Scottish Government concluded in the summer 2019 as significant progress had been made around the implementation of the recommendations from the review. As the external group was put in place to oversee the implementation of the recommendations there is no final report with further findings however officials provided me with regular progress updates.

Sir James Mackey and Professor Derek Bell were content with the work progressed by NHS Lothian and the external team in relation to the recommendations.

Information on the average waiting time to see a dementia specialist is not collected or held by NHS National Services Scotland (NSS).

NSS collect and hold information relating to referrals to old age psychiatry but it is not dementia-specific.

The Standards of Care for Dementia (2011) state that people have the right to a dementia diagnosis; and that when a person with a suspected dementia is referred to a specialist diagnostic service, that service should have initial contact with the person within four weeks of referral.

I refer the Member to the answer to question S5W-25953 on 6 November 2019. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at: http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx .

The Scottish Government is committed to improving Scotland’s lung cancer early detection rates – this is reflected in our ongoing £42 million Detect Cancer Early (DCE) Programme. Since the Programme began in 2012, there’s been a 31.0% increase in stage 1 lung cancer diagnoses in most deprived areas of Scotland and work will continue to further improve this position.

Reducing the health inequality gap remains a priority for the Scottish Government. To date, over £2.7 million has been committed to Health Boards and third sector organisations, through the Scottish Government's Health Inequalities Fund, to fund projects targeted at reducing inequalities in access to the three cancer screening programmes and improve screening uptake amongst groups least likely to participate.

The Scottish Government expects NHS Boards to apply relevant condition-specific clinical protocols as well as overarching standards, such as those set out in the Minimum Standards and Quality Indicators for Critical Care in Scotland which were published in 2015, when caring for people in Intensive Care Units.

However, which specific guidelines and protocols are followed are a matter for clinicians to decide based on the clinical needs of each individual in the Unit.

Proton Beam Therapy is currently available to patients through the NHS. However, due to the highly specialised nature of the treatment, there are only a few centres that can offer this kind of intervention. Scottish cancer patients who require this treatment are referred to appropriate specialist centres out with Scotland. Around 30 patients were referred last year to six different specialist centres. All costs associated with this referral are covered by central NHS Scotland funding.

The following table gives the total number of deaths in all beds (level 2 or level 3) in Intensive Care and Combined units across Scotland by NHS board of treatment for the period 2016-2018.

The average number of funded level 3 beds in Intensive Care and Combined Unitsin Scotland for each year in the period 2014-2018 is included in the following table. Combined units also contain level 2 HDU beds, these are not shown in the following table.

The Scottish Government provides funding to support dementia research via a number of mechanisms.

• Direct funding of research projects and fellowships submitted to the Chief Scientist Office (CSO) funding panels for consideration. In common with all other applications, those in dementia go through CSO's external independent expert review process to enable funding decisions to be made based on the quality and importance of the proposed research. The funding level is subject to quality and number of applications submitted. CSO also has a programme of collaboration with research charities to co-fund research, including in dementia. In this instance the charity may take the lead in organising the independent external review process.
• Funding of the NHS Research Scotland Dementia and Neuroprogressive Disease Research Network since 2008/9 (currently £506,000 per annum) to promote a culture of clinical research in dementia and ND across Scotland and to maximise patient recruitment to high quality clinical studies.
• Further indirect support is provided though an annual contribution (currently around £10m) to the major National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) programmes that cover a broad range of health research including dementia research across the UK.

The following table provides a breakdown of CSO funding in dementia research through project/fellowship funding and the annual funding provided to the NRS Dementia and Neuroprogressive Disease research network. Project and fellowship funding is allocated to the year in which the funding commitment was made. Data was extracted from the CSO database and covers research on Alzheimer’s Disease, other cause dementia and studies on cognitive ageing / decline.