Chapter 2 Key Achievements 2010/11
NHSScotland delivered a number of significant and important achievements during 2010/11, and made further progress towards our vision of world-leading healthcare services and a healthier Scotland. These achievements include the specific progress towards the national targets agreed for NHSScotland in 2010/11, and a range of broader quality improvements.
Each year, the Scottish Government sets performance targets for NHS Boards to ensure that the resources made available to them are directed to priority areas for improvement, consistent with the Government's Purpose 4 and National Outcomes 5 , and with the strategic direction set out in the Quality Strategy. These targets are focused on Health Improvement, Efficiency, Access and Treatment, and are known collectively as HEAT targets.
Our HEAT targets for NHSScotland set out the priorities for accelerated improvement to support the delivery of improved health and wellbeing outcomes for the people of Scotland. NHSScotland has delivered notably strong performance against the person-centred, safe and effective Quality Ambitions in a number of areas:
- delivery of the maximum wait of nine weeks for all inpatient and day case treatments;
- completing over 174,000 alcohol brief interventions to help tackle harmful and hazardous drinking over the last three years;
- supporting 89,075 smokers to successfully quit (measured at one month) over the last three years;
- achieving significant reductions against baseline in levels of Healthcare Associated Infections (37 per cent fall in MRSA/ MSSA, 71 per cent fall in Clostridium difficile);
- achieving an 11 per cent reduction by 2009/10 in bed days for long term conditions against an 8 per cent target for 2010/11;
- delivering the highest rates of day surgery in 2010/11 and the lowest emergency inpatient average length of stay in 2009/10;
- exceeding the 90 per cent GP access target - with 94 per cent of people able to access an appropriate member of the GP practice team within 48 hours;
- increasing the number of patients with a confirmed diagnosis of dementia by one-third;
- achieving financial balance for every NHS Board; and
- achieving a total of £595 million efficiency savings.
By 2010/11, NHSScotland also achieved the early delivery of the two cancer waiting times HEAT targets, not due until December 2011, and made significant progress against the 18 week Referral to Treatment target.
Information on progress towards all the HEAT targets for NHSScotland is available for public scrutiny through the Scottish Government website Scotland Performs 6 . This is updated on a monthly basis and includes both national and NHS Board level information.
People are experiencing improved outcomes for cancer, stroke and heart disease. Our world-leading Scottish Patient Safety Programme is making a real difference to standards of care and to hospital mortality, and through our Releasing Time to Care programme of work, nurses are now able to spend more time with patients, improving outcomes and experience for both staff and patients by, for example, reducing falls and improving staff motivation.
Improvements in safety in our hospitals have contributed to a 7 per cent reduction in hospital standardised mortality rates since the baseline year of measurement (October 2006 - September 2007).