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New guidance is being issued to health boards which will bring in a uniform national policy on introducing newly-licensed medicines.
Issuing today to board chief executives across Scotland, the guidance to boards will mean clearer and easier to follow policies for patients looking to access new medicines. All boards will have to follow the same guidance when considering whether to make drugs available on the NHS.
The guidance covers all medicines, including drugs which have either not been approved or not yet considered by the Scottish Medicines Consortium - which approves drugs for general use on the NHS. The guidance will apply wherever a clinician makes an individual request to a board for a drug not approved by the SMC to be used for a patient. Health boards will also be expected to make their policies public and to help patients through the process on request.
It will ensure the same guidance is followed by health boards, regardless of where in Scotland a patient lives.
The guidance has been welcomed by Parliament's Public Petitions Committee. It follows two years of collaboration between the Scottish Government and the committee, taking forward the Committee's recommendations following a petition from Tina McGeever. Ms McGeever's husband Mike Gray lost his life to cancer in 2008.
Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon said:
"We already have a very fair, rigorous and quick system for appraising NHS drugs in Scotland. The Scottish Medicines Consortium considers whether newly-licensed drugs should be used nationwide and recommends them for use where they are proved to be safe, clinically effective and cost-effective.
"Even where a medicine isn't recommended by the SMC for general use, patients in Scotland can still get it on the NHS if their clinician believes it is appropriate and obtains permission from their local health board.
"But what was clear from the extensive work we have done with Parliament's Petitions Committee is that navigating the system is not always easy - particularly when patients and their loved ones are dealing with very difficult circumstances.
"Today's new guidance should change that. It not only makes explicit to health boards all that we expect them to do, but makes clear that they must be open and transparent about their processes and decisions. All boards will be expected to follow the same guidance, which will be adapted to meet local circumstances.
"This new guidance follows extensive consultation and takes full account of the issues raised by the Petitions Committee. I hope it will benefit patients and families across Scotland."
Frank McAveety, Convener of the Public Petitions Committee, said:
"Tina McGeever's petition started this whole process. She and her late husband Michael Gray set out to improve the processes for accessing cancer treatment drugs and this welcome guidance from the Scottish Government is the latest in a number of improvements she has brought about which will bring benefits to many. It is testament to her commitment to their petition.
"The Public Petitions Committee has, since the petition was first considered, worked collaboratively and productively with the Scottish Government and we will continue to do so.
"We appreciated the openness and commitment to work together shown by the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing. It is a true example of what the public petitions process is about and of how people, parliament and government can work closely and effectively to bring in improvements such as this."
More people are now able to see or speak to their GP in Scotland within 48 hours, according to statistics published today.
The GP Patient Experience Survey Access Results for 2010, published by the Chief Statistician, show a significant increase in the number of patients able to get access to a GP within 48 hours. The proportion of patients able to book an appointment in advance has also increased.
Key points in today's statistics include:
* At 90 per cent of GP practices, at least 90 per cent of patients were able to get access to a GP within 48 hours - up from 67 per cent last year
* At 58 per cent of practices, at least 90 per cent of patients were able to book an appointment in advance - up from 39 per cent last year
Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon said:
"GPs are often the first point of contact for patients when they need treatment or healthcare advice and it's vital that people can get prompt access their GP when they need to.
"This survey highlights that significant improvements are being made and many more patients have been able to access help and advice when they need it.
"However, there is still room for improvement and the Scottish Government is currently working with the Royal College of GPs in Scotland to develop guidance that will help all GP surgeries address any issues surrounding access to ensure they are offering a high quality service that meets local needs."
The Chief Executive of NHSScotland's Annual Report highlights progress on the 2008/2009 key priorities across NHSScotland.
As well as assessing NHSScotland's performance, the report also explains the financial and policy context of the achievements made and challenges faced by the NHS in Scotland.
It outlines the progress made on the Scottish Government's action plan for health - Better Health, Better Care - and assesses NHSScotland's performance against a range of HEAT targets.
A blueprint for maximising the contribution allied health professionals (AHPs) make to supporting people with mental health problems was today unveiled by Public Health Minister Shona Robison.
The plan will help bring together the work of AHPs in mental health with service users and carers, professional bodies and NHS boards in a bid to further improve the quality and range of care and support delivered to people with a mental illness.
The three-year action plan has a number of key actions, structured to make the biggest possible difference to improving the lives of service users and their carers, including:
* enhancing timely access to AHP services for service users and carers
* exploring and developing the concept of supported self-management for service users and carers
* developing partnerships with service users and carers, other health professionals and agencies through better joint working
* promoting improved mental health and wellbeing
* expanding the AHP role in designing and delivering psychological therapies
* supporting individuals to learn new skills and help them into work
The action plan aims to deliver earlier intervention and foster access to these important AHP services that promote wellbeing, support recovery and enable people to live their lives to the full. This work includes support for service users to stay in or return to work, education or productive living and aims to maximise quality of life.
Launching the report at The Hub in Edinburgh, Ms Robison said: "This action plan is designed to improve access, tackle inequity, promote self-management and enable greater independence.
"Crucially it is based on what service-users have told us they want from their services. They have identified that early intervention, support to manage their own conditions and aid recovery and promoting improved physical health and mental wellbeing are the most important ways in which AHPs can have the most positive impact.
"These are in line with the Scottish Government's aims of ensuring good quality services are available for everyone who needs them and improving the mental wellbeing of the people in Scotland."
The three-year action plan will be implemented locally and driven by AHPs. The plan will also be supported nationally by an Implementation Board, involving key stakeholders and an AHP mental health clinical leaders group that will link directly into current mental health performance monitoring systems.
Mental health can affect anyone at any time. AHPs such as occupational therapists, arts therapists, dieticians, speech and language therapists and physiotherapists play a key role in supporting the mental, emotional and physical wellbeing of individuals and their recovery from mental health problems.
A BBC
report http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/10433905.stm
NHS Inform will provide the public, patients and carers with a wide range of information online, over the telephone and, in the future, face to face.
The first phase of the new service will be officially opened on Tuesday by Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon.
It has been developed by NHS Scotland and a range of voluntary organisations.
The website will bring together national and local health information that already exists across the NHS and other sectors.
At launch, the site will feature an updated and expanded health directory, commonly asked questions and links to local information across Scotland.
It will also offer dedicated information on health and welfare topics, health features and a portal to translated information about health and health services in Scotland.
Ms Sturgeon is also due to chair NHS 24's annual review, which will include an opportunity for members of the public attending the review to ask questions.
Cut the salaries of senior managers, not cancer specialists, nurses or hospital cleaners, writes Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing Jackie Baillie MSP
The National Health Service in Scotland is facing its biggest challenge in a generation, having already seen the tightest NHS financial settlement since devolution.
Scottish health boards are looking to cut spending by at least £270m this year and Audit Scotland has warned that it will be difficult for some to achieve the required level of savings without a negative impact on the services they provide. In practice, this means that across the country staffing levels are being reduced, training budgets are being squeezed and frontline services are being cut.
NHS Lothian, for example, is looking to axe 700 NHS jobs this year and a further 1,300 next. As part of the cutbacks, their lauded cancer care team will not be expanded, even though demands on the service are likely to increase with a growing and ageing population.
In NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde, the axe will fall on over 1,250 jobs, and more than half of them will be nurses. You cannot get rid of so many frontline staff without having an impact on patient care. Also in Glasgow, the equivalent of 500 cleaning hours a week are being shed at the city's Royal Infirmary and similar cuts are planned at other hospitals across the city.
In other areas of Scotland, specialist nurses have been redeployed to ward duties, their particular expertise lost to those patients who require tailored care. Community midwifery units have been closed at night-time with an on call service operating in place of 24/7 provision. It has even been reported that some NHS managers have put a block on the supply of tea and coffee for inpatients.
The NHS must resist the pressure to make quick savings by cutting frontline services. Savings can be made in the salaries of senior managers, but we shouldn't be cutting back on cancer specialists, nurses or hospital cleaners.
Our hospitals must be cleaner and safer. At the most basic level, people go into hospital to get better, not to be infected with life threatening illnesses. As the local MSP for Dumbarton, I was proud to support the families who lost loved ones to C. difficile at the Vale of Leven in their campaign for a public inquiry. This was the worst outbreak, in terms of mortality, of C. difficile in the UK.
I am deeply concerned that the number of patients and staff infected with norovirus has almost doubled in the past year, closing numerous wards across hospitals in Scotland. The same conditions that allow norovirus to flourish also leave us exposed to more serious infections like C. difficile and MRSA.
Scottish Labour drew up a 15-point plan with assistance from leading health experts Professors Hugh Pennington and Brian Toft. We will continue to press the Scottish Government to implement it in full. But the progress we desperately need in the fight against infection cannot
be achieved if hospitals are cutting back on cleaners to save money.
Despite real progress over the last decade, cancer still casts a dark shadow over Scotland and more has to be done to reduce cancers; a new right halving the time from one month to two weeks to see a cancer specialist and get results needs to be introduced as, at present, the waiting time for people referred by their GP for cancer tests is 31 days. To meet this target, £10m must be invested each year, based on Scottish Government costs of reducing current waiting times, and a cancer expert to drive progress should be appointed.
I also believe that it is unfair and unjust that Scotland is the only part of the UK where people with cancer have to pay for prescriptions. All prescriptions are free in Wales and in Northern Ireland. People with cancer in England have been eligible for free prescriptions since 1st April 2009. According to the Department of Health, up to 150,000 patients in England are benefiting, saving as much as £100 a year on prescription charges.
In England, this commitment is being funded by reducing the cost of the drugs bill in the NHS by bulk buying and the use of cheaper generic products. However, cancer patients in Scotland will continue to be charged for prescriptions until 2011.
The core issue here is fairness. In Scotland, cancer not only threatens your life, but can also make you poor. I believe that the job of Health Secretary is among the most important in the Scottish Government. For too long, we have lived with the legacy of one of the most appalling health records in the Western world, but initiatives such as the smoking ban show that we are capable of turning the corner.
NHS staff and patients need to be engaged in order to defend and ensure fairness within Scottish services, and, ultimately, make our nation healthier.
The Chief Executive of NHSScotland's Annual Report highlights progress on the 2009/2010 key priorities across NHSScotland.
As well as assessing NHSScotland's performance, the report also explains the financial and policy context of the achievements made and challenges faced by the NHS in Scotland.
It outlines the Healthcare Quality Strategy for NHSScotland - and assesses NHSScotland's performance against a range of HEAT targets.
The NHSScotland Quality Strategy is an approach which aims to put quality right at the heart of NHSScotland and it recognises that patients' experience of the NHS is about more than speedy treatment - it is the quality of care they get that matters most to them.
For the first time, the quality of care provided by NHSScotland will be measured through the experience of patients and the information will be used to drive up standards.
Patients will be encouraged to be partners in their own care and can expect to experience improvements in the things patients have said they want from their health service. Find out more
Download the Quality Strategy Core Messages (PDF)
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Stress
Steps for StressSteps to deal with stress
Stress doesn't just make you feel bad, it's not good for your health. Thankfully, there are steps you can take to start dealing with it.
Research shows that small steps can make a big difference. Here are some practical ways for you to start dealing with stress.
A panel of independent experts has backed a Scottish Government plan to reform the system of NHS compensation claims.
Set up by the Health Secretary in 2009, the No-Fault Compensation Review Group - headed by law and medical ethics expert Professor Sheila McLean - has now recommended changing the current adversarial court system to one of no-fault compensation.
The recommended change would mean patients who have suffered loss, injury or damage as a result of healthcare treatment could be compensated without having to take the NHS to court. The proposed new system would still require proof that harm was caused by treatment but would remove the need to prove negligence.
The review group's report suggests a no-fault system could have several benefits for patients and the health service:
* Fair and adequate compensation for harm suffered
* Quicker rehabilitation, which would no longer need to wait until legal action has been completed
* Broader eligibility criteria than the current system
* Greater scope for the NHS to learn from mistakes so that care can be improved
* More efficient use of public time and money
* Wider access to justice for patients, with the removal of the need to pay legal fees
The report suggests more patients could have claims resolved under such a system than currently achieve resolution through the courts - potentially for around the same costs as the NHS currently pays in compensation and legal fees.
No-fault systems are already in place in countries such as Sweden, New Zealand, Finland, Denmark and Norway, and parts of the United States.
Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon said:
"The vast majority of the care delivered in our NHS is of the highest quality, but it is important that people who have suffered as a result of clinical mistakes should have some form of redress.
"Nevertheless, it's in no-one's best interests to have that redress delayed because a compensation claim can take years to go through the courts and nor is it in anyone's interests to have precious NHS resources spent on expensive legal fees.
"No-fault compensation would be a sensible way to ensure people who have been affected are compensated without tying up either patients or the health service in years of litigation. It's very encouraging that the review group's report has recommended this system.
"I'm grateful to them for their hard work over the last eighteen months. The next step now is to investigate thoroughly how such a scheme would work in practice - including further analysis of any cost implications - both for the benefit of individual patients and the good of the health service as a whole."
Chair of the No-Fault Compensation Review Group Professor Sheila McLean said:
"I am delighted that the Scottish Government has decided to accept the Review Group's recommendations and explore how a no-fault compensation system could be introduced in Scotland.
"It is important that the aim of any compensation scheme should be to facilitate access to justice, provide appropriate compensation for injured patients and ensure proper and timely adjudication of claims.
"The members of the Review Group were clear that the current system is not meeting the needs of patients, and will welcome the Scottish Government announcement."
Every health board in Scotland is to introduce a scheme to free up more nurses' time for direct patient care, thanks to the NHS Quality Strategy, published today.
The Releasing Time to Care (RTC) initiative will now be rolled out to all health boards.
Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon today visited a cardiac ward at Hairmyres Hospital in Lanarkshire which is using RTC.
The visit coincided with the publication of the Quality Strategy, which sets out the actions which will be taken to improve the quality of NHS healthcare.
The strategy seeks to improve the quality of care patients receive from the NHS, recognising that the patient's experience of the NHS is about more than speedy treatment - it is the quality of care they get that matters most to them.
The Quality Strategy will see the quality of care provided by the NHS measured for the first time through patients' experience and the information used to drive up standards.
RTC is an example of one of the ways in which the NHS is improving under the Quality Strategy. It focuses on improving ward processes and environment to help nurses spend more time on patient care, thereby improving safety, efficiency and quality.
Pilot sites have shown an increase in time spent on direct patient care by up to 40 per cent, as well as improved leadership, efficiency and staff morale.
NHS Lanarkshire, which is using RTC in 44 clinical areas, has reported a 3.9 per cent drop in sickness absence and an estimated 8776 hours released back to patient care on the wards using the project.
On the cardiac ward, improvements include:
* Hand hygiene compliance increased from 57 per cent to 100 per cent
* A 24 per cent increase on compliance with food, fluid and nutrition standards
* A reduction in the average length of patient stay by 0.88 days
Ms Sturgeon said: "This innovative programme is improving patient and staff experience, as well as improving efficiency and productivity.
"It is exactly the kind of thing that I want to see more of as the Quality Strategy develops.
"The Quality Strategy will put patients at the heart of everything the NHS does and give people a new confidence in the health service.
"All too often I hear people say of their dealings with the NHS that the clinical care was good, but that the food or communication could have been better or that they didn't feel they were treated with enough dignity and respect.
"The task facing us all is to ensure the way patients are treated becomes as important to everyone delivering healthcare as how quickly they are treated. The Quality Strategy will enable us to achieve this.
"We have always had some genuinely excellent care in the NHS. The strategy aims to ensure this happens for every person, every time. In time, our aim is to make Scotland a world leader in delivering highest quality healthcare."
A Quality Alliance, which will include senior representatives from stakeholder groups, will be set up to monitor progress towards the three ambitions set out in the Quality Strategy. These are developing an NHS which is safe, clinically effective and person-centred.
Linda King, senior charge nurse in the cardiac ward at Hairmyres, said: "Starting this project was fairly daunting at first to identify how we could reduce wasted time in order to increase the time we spend with patients.
"This is about improving clinical care through a well-organised ward. Our motto in here is "a place for everything and everything in its place". By working to this we know exactly where to find our equipment and supplies, and knowing if they are not in their place then they are in use. It's quite simple really but this is saving a significant amount of staff time searching for things.
"The time we have been able to release has allowed us to improve quality and patient safety by initiatives such as hand hygiene compliance and having early warning systems for patients who have the potential to become seriously unwell. We are able to provide evidence of improvements from before the start of the project to now.
"We are committed to this way of working which is driving us to continually improve."
RTC is currently running in eight health boards in Scotland and is now being extended to every board.
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/News/Releases/2010/05/10114916