The National Health Service in Scotland Quarterly Bulletin
No. 7: April 1998 to March 1999

Latest Developments

• The Human Resources Strategy "Towards a New Way of Working" committed the NHSiS to working more flexibly and in partnership. At the core of the strategy is the development of inclusive partnerships to deal with organisational issues. The Scottish Partnership Forum (SPF) is now well established and is shortly to publish a partnership template to assist NHSiS employers in the process to develop local partnership agreements. The Occupational Health and Safety Service Strategy and SPF project groups reports are expected to be published this Summer.
• On 26 February, a new £15.5 million modernisation programme for Health Centre type accommodation to address priorities identified locally and a new flexibility within the cost rent scheme, where GPs may commission new premises for lease from a third party, were announced.
• A £4 million investment over 3 years to develop electronic transmission of prescription information, was announced in March. A procurement exercise is now underway to identify the most appropriate way forward.
• The Health Act 1999 which includes legislation to complete the replacement of the internal market with a more co-operative structure for the National Health Service in Scotland received Royal Assent on 30 June 1999. It will be brought into effect progressively, most of the provisions coming into force from 1 September.
• In February 1999, £4.5 million was issued to the NHS in Scotland to reward those NHS Trusts which achieved prompt reductions in waiting lists and waiting times. Awards were made to 21 NHS Trusts.
• A considerable amount of work is now in train to take forward the thinking set out in the report of the Acute Services Review, published just over a year ago. Managed Clinical Networks (MCNs) are widely accepted as the most significant idea to emerge from the Review. A national conference on MCNs will take place on 18 October.
• The CHD Task Force in its Interim Report identified capacity within existing cardiac surgery centres to undertake nearly 500 extra coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) operations a year. A £7m CHD programme was announced in February covering the complete spectrum of CHD activity, with the additional CABGs having first call on the funding.
• A Remote and Rural Areas Resource Centre is being set up at Raigmore with funding of £2m a year. The overall aim of the Centre is the strengthening of services in all remote and rural parts of Scotland.
• Following publication of the Strategic Programme for Modernising IM&T, the programme to connect all NHS Trusts and Boards to NHSnet is nearly complete, the new GPASS software to provide improved clinical support to GP's is now live in nearly 200 practices and a programme to make the Community Health Index (CHI) number available to hospital systems is underway. All Health Boards are working on collaborative IM&T strategies with their NHS Trusts.

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Notes and Definitions

This section provides some very brief notes about particular items of data contained within the bulletin. More detailed explanations of the technical terms can be obtained from the Information and Statistics Division (ISD) of the Common Services Agency.

1 The information presented in these bulletins will be based on the four quarters of a financial year.

2 Figures for occupied beds in table 2 were calculated as 'occupied bed days divided by 365'.

Other Publications

This short bulletin is intended to provide a summary of some of the key points of interest in Health. For more detail on particular topics of interest, please refer to:-

The NHSiS Annual Report; Chief Medical Officer's Annual Report; Acute Services Review Bulletins; The Scottish Abstract of Statistics - all published by Scottish Executive. Scottish Health Statistics and the NHSiS Complaints Bulletin - both published by ISD along with numerous other publications on Health.