Chamber and committees

The COVID pandemic has inevitably affected A&E attendance and the pressure is being felt across the UK. While Scotland continues to have the best performing A&E in the whole of the UK, our NHS staff are facing unprecedented pressures as they work tirelessly and consistently to respond to the pandemic whilst continuing to provide vital treatment and optimal patient care.

Demand on NHS Highland services has been, and continues to be challenged. This is largely due to limited bed capacity due to staffing pressures, and an increase in attendances to A&E by those who are much sicker and require higher levels of care.

We are in daily contact with NHS Highland and continue to support improvement work within the Board and the Health & Social Care Partnerships to minimise delays for patients no matter where they are in the system. We also invested an additional £12 million in the summer to support improvements, NHS Highland has used its allocation to increase capacity in community hospitals.

Additionally, to help alleviate pressures across the whole system we announced a substantial new investment of over £300 million in hospital and community care to support the NHS and social care system over winter. The new funding will support a range of measures to maximise capacity in hospitals and primary care, reduce delayed discharges, improve pay for social care staff, and ensure those in the community who need support receive effective and responsive care, helping to improve waiting times for people attending A&E.

The number of patients who have waited over 12 weeks for Trauma and Orthopaedic surgery in NHS Highland are published by Public Health Scotland (PHS) on a quarterly basis. These details are available on PHS’s website and can be found in table 1.2 through the following link: https://www.publichealthscotland.scot/media/8811/newop_aug21.xlsx

Scottish Government officials are in regular contact with NHS Highland to support the service management team with the delivery of orthopaedic elective procedures within the Health Board.

In response to the pressures on NHS services caused by the pandemic, which we are still firmly in the midst of, the First Minster launched the NHS Recovery Plan, on the 25 August. The Plan sets out the Scottish Governments key headline ambitions and actions to be developed and delivered now and over the next 5 years, including an increase in both inpatient and outpatient capacity across the Country. The plan is backed by more than £1 billion of investment over the next five years.

As part of this, we are investing over £400 million in a network of National Treatment Centres, one of which will be located in NHS Highland. When fully operational, the National Treatment Centres will provide increased capacity for surgeries and procedures across 14 specialties, including hip and knee surgery.

The requested information is not centrally held. NHS Education for Scotland publish annual data on joiners/leavers, but this information is not available by reason or destination.

Information on joiners/leavers by staff group for each financial year can be found on the following link:

https://turasdata.nes.nhs.scot/media/tnvdmmwd/turnover_m2021_updated.xlsx

The requested information is not centrally held. NHS Education for Scotland publish annual data on joiners/leavers, but this information is not available by reason or destination.

Information on joiners/leavers by staff group for each financial year can be found on the following link:

https://turasdata.nes.nhs.scot/media/tnvdmmwd/turnover_m2021_updated.xlsx

The requested information is not centrally held. NHS Education for Scotland publish annual data on joiners/leavers, but this information is not available by reason or destination.

Information on joiners/leavers by staff group for each financial year can be found on the following link:

https://turasdata.nes.nhs.scot/media/tnvdmmwd/turnover_m2021_updated.xlsx

Weekly information on the mode of outpatient clinical interactions by NHS Board is published by Public Health Scotland (PHS) as part of the Wider Impacts Dashboard .

Table one shows new and return outpatient face to face appointments by NHS Board of Treatment between 2 March 2020 to 27 December 2020

Table one shows the total number of patients seen and number that waited over 18 weeks to be seen for orthopaedic treatment in NHS Highland, from January 2020 to June 2021.

The information requested is not held centrally.

The Scottish Government continues to be committed to improving the lives of autistic people in Scotland. We published our Learning/Intellectual Disabilities and Autism: Towards Transformation Plan in March 2021, which builds on existing autism and learning disabilities strategies. The plan looks at the actions needed to shape supports, services and attitudes to ensure that the human rights of autistic people and people with learning/intellectual disabilities are respected and protected and that they are empowered to live their lives, the same as everyone else.

We do not directly fund assistance dogs for autistic people. You may find it useful to know that the Scottish Government was approached and does fund a project run by Alzheimer’s Scotland that pioneers the use of assistance dogs for people with dementia.

Whilst the Scottish Government has overall responsibility for health and social care policy in Scotland, it is for the regional health & social care partnerships to determine the level of services that are required to meet local needs and to arrange an appropriate and suitable range of services to meet these local needs, as mandated under statute in the Public Bodies (Joint Working) (Scotland) Act. Local Authorities may be able to say whether they consider assistance dogs as part of their package of support options.