Chamber and committees

Questions and answers

Parliamentary questions can be asked by any MSP to the Scottish Government or the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. The questions provide a means for MSPs to get factual and statistical information.

Written questions must be answered within 10 working days (20 working days during recess)
Other questions such as Topical, Portfolio, General and First Minister's Question Times are taken in the Chamber

Urgent Questions aren't included in the Question and Answers search. There is a SPICe fact sheet listing Urgent and emergency questions.

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Question reference: S5W-21603

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 11 February 2019
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 26 February 2019

To ask the Scottish Government when it will publish its latest NHS workforce plan.

We have already published workforce plans covering the NHS, Primary Care and Social Care.

We intend to publish our integrated health and social care workforce plan this year, as the Health Secretary made clear when she updated parliament in November. We are also currently taking our safe staffing legislation through the Scottish Parliament – the first multidisciplinary workforce and workload planning legislation in the UK.

Workforce supply pressures are compounded by the impact of Brexit, and we will undertake additional international recruitment activity in this financial year to promote the resilience of NHS Scotland as a result of EU Withdrawal.

Question reference: S5W-21520

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 06 February 2019
Current Status: Answered by Joe FitzPatrick on 26 February 2019

To ask Scottish Government how NHS boards ensure that people with Parkinson’s who are in hospital are always provided with their appropriate medication on time.

Ensuring patients receive their medication on time when in hospital is a fundamental aspect of good quality care. This is set out in professional guidance, published in January 2019 by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, on 'the Administration of Medicines in Healthcare Settings'.

In addition the Chief Pharmaceutical Officer has published a strategy 'Achieving Excellence in Pharmaceutical Care' that makes reference to the use of people’s own medicines when they are inpatients to facilitate medicine compliance in hospitals. This practice supports the medicines reconciliation process and ensures medicine changes are shared with care providers.

Other initiatives, such as semi-automated medicines cabinets, are also beginning to be used in hospital wards and departments that enable timely access to medicines. These cabinets provide automatic ordering of required medication and allow keyless but secure access to stored medication through fingerprint identification, which also enables greater accountability and tracing of medication. We will continue to encourage hospitals to invest in these technologies.

Question reference: S5W-21522

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 06 February 2019
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 26 February 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what the average waiting time is to have deep brain stimulation surgery following assessment.

Question reference: S5W-21518

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 06 February 2019
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 26 February 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to address the reported 10% consultant vacancy rate in neurology and medicine for older people.

The Scottish Government works closely with Boards to support their efforts in staff recruitment and retention. To support health boards, we are investing £4 million over the next three years in domestic and international recruitment for GPs, nursing, midwifery and consultant specialties with the highest existing vacancy rates.

We are working to develop a comprehensive plan to help address recruitment and retention challenges across the health and social care sector. This includes consultation on Scotland’s first National Action Plan for Neurological Conditions, which covers a number of areas including workforce planning. We are carefully considering the consultations responses with a view to publishing the final plan later this year.

Question reference: S5W-21606

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 11 February 2019
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 26 February 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what the average waiting time has been for an appointment at a chronic pain clinic in each year since 1999.

Data on waiting times for a chronic pain clinic has only been collated since December 2015.

The below table sets out the median waiting time in weeks for a first appointment at a pain clinic or pain psychology clinic since December 2015.

Table 1: Median wait in weeks for a first appointment at a pain clinic or pain psychology clinic

Quarter Ending	Pain clinic/ service	Pain psychology clinic
31-DEC-2015	11	7
31-MAR-2016	12	9
30-JUN-2016	13	10
30-SEP-2016	16	6
31-DEC-2016	15	8
31-MAR-2017	13	11
30-JUN-2017	13	9
30-SEP-2017	13	8
31-DEC-2017	12	12
31-MAR-2018	12	10
30-JUN-2018	12	14
30-SEP-2018	13	20

Source: ISD Waiting Times Warehouse

Question reference: S5W-21523

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 06 February 2019
Current Status: Answered by Joe FitzPatrick on 26 February 2019

To ask the Scottish Government how many deep brain stimulation (DBS) procedures have been performed since the national DBS centre opened in April 2018.

Question reference: S5W-21519

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 06 February 2019
Current Status: Answered by Clare Haughey on 22 February 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to ensure that people with Parkinson’s are able to access appropriate mental health services.

The Scottish Government wants everyone with a neurological condition to be able to access the care and support they need to live well, on their own terms, and we are determined to improve access to mental health services for all those who need them. We are investing £250 million in services over five years, and £54 million to help NHS Boards improve access to psychological therapies by investing in workforce development, recruitment and retention, and service improvement support. Additionally, we support NHS 24 to provide a number of other services designed to expand access to treatment including computerised Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.

Question reference: S5W-21287

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 30 January 2019
Current Status: Answered by Joe FitzPatrick on 21 February 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what consideration it has given to prescribing very low calorie diets as part of action by the NHS to tackle rises in obesity and type 2 diabetes.

Tackling obesity and the growing prevalence of type 2 diabetes are high priorities for the Scottish Government.

In addition to the Diet & Healthy Weight delivery plan, last summer I published the Type 2 Diabetes Prevention, Early Detection and Intervention Framework , the implementation of which will be supported by £42 million over the next 5 years. The framework provides national guidance to NHS Boards on the provision of evidenced-based weight management interventions. This includes very low calorie diets and total diet replacement programmes with staged food re-introduction, to suitable patients, based on evidence of successful remission results from the DiRECT trial, a collaboration between University of Glasgow, Newcastle University and Diabetes UK.

The Type 2 Diabetes Prevention, Early Detection and Intervention Framework can be found at this line: https://www.gov.scot/publications/healthier-future-framework-prevention-early-detection-early-intervention-type-2/pages/11/ .

Question reference: S5O-02929

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 20 February 2019
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 28 February 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what progress is being made with introducing access to thrombectomy services in Scotland.

Question reference: S5W-21323

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 30 January 2019
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 20 February 2019

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-16693 by Shona Robison on 29 May 2018, whether it will provide an update regarding the VOICES survey to capture end of life experiences of family members and carers who have been bereaved.

The NHS Lothian project team has recently reported that they have completed the significant preparatory work required to take forward this project.

The project team have chosen not to proceed as initially planned, for a number of reasons. These include the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation which has increased costs significantly, the large sample size required to make the findings useful for service improvement, the need to put in place support arrangements for those contacted, and most significantly the ethical requirement for the benefit of those findings to outweigh the distress caused by surveying the recently deceased.

Officials have asked the project team to take forward additional work to provide options on how best to establish a more coherent picture of the quality of end of life care, including the views of the bereaved, which can also be used for improving service delivery.