– in the Scottish Parliament am ar 21 Chwefror 2024.
2. To ask the Scottish Government how it is tackling NHS waiting times for conditions affecting children, adolescents and young adults. (S6O-03095)
A range of initiatives are in place to support health boards to increase productivity and capacity and to respond to demand through service innovation and redesign. The centre for sustainable delivery is working with boards to accelerate the implementation of high-impact changes, including active clinical referral triage and patient-initiated review, which will free up additional capacity in the NHS system.
We are working with health boards on detailed annual plans to demonstrate how waiting lists will be managed in order to reduce waiting times and improve productivity, with clear evidence on how that will help to free up additional capacity. We are developing a “once for Scotland” pathway, which will harness all opportunities to deliver patient care in the right place and closer to home. That includes maximising the number of day-case procedures to avoid unnecessary stays in hospital.
I have a young constituent who has suffered from tonsillitis more than 14 times in the past 12 to 18 months. The condition is occurring more frequently and has recently been recurring every two weeks. Her education is constantly disrupted with days off school, and she is concerned about how that will impact her end-of-year grade.
My constituent has been told that the waiting time for a tonsillectomy is 22 months. What actions will the cabinet secretary take to ensure that my constituent does not miss out on any more valuable school time? What is the Scottish Government doing to reduce waiting times for that procedure for children and young people?
I thank Pam Gosal for her narration of the situation that is impacting her constituent. My thoughts are with her constituent and her constituent’s family in their efforts to ensure that her constituent receives the treatment that she should.
The Scottish Government commissioned the centre for sustainable delivery to play a central role in working with health boards to ensure that they are continually able to identify new ways of increasing capacity. Its programmes have developed strong clinically led specialty delivery groups, including one for ear, nose and throat services, which promote multidisciplinary team working and support local adoption of service improvement programmes.
We know that there is more to do, but we are making progress. Since the introduction of our long waits target in July 2022, ENT waits of more than two years have reduced by 93 per cent for new out-patient appointments and by 54 per cent for in-patient and day-case appointments.
I will be happy to follow up with Pam Gosal if she provides me with more details of her constituent’s case.
I am pleased that the Conservative member for West Scotland has raised waiting times for children and young people, as long waits for child and adolescent mental health services come up regularly in my casework—indeed, the Government has never met its CAMHS waiting time target. Does the cabinet secretary accept that there might be a link between repeatedly freezing and then reducing the mental health budget in-year, and the Government having never met that waiting time target?
I appreciate Paul Sweeney’s question. I am pleased that progress is being made on long waits, but it is clearly unacceptable for child and adolescent mental health services patients to continue to experience them. However, there has been positive improvement in CAMHS waiting times over the past year. Thirteen out of 14 CAMHS services have in effect eliminated their long waits. Such services continue to respond well to high demand, with one in two children starting treatment within 10 weeks.
Overall, CAMHS waiting lists decreased by 36 per cent in the past year, and the number of children who are waiting for more than 52 weeks decreased by 88 per cent in the same period. I agree that it is unacceptable for children to wait for any longer than is necessary, but the investments that we are making alongside our health board partners and integration joint boards are clearly making a difference in driving down such waiting times.