Portfolio Question Time – in the Scottish Parliament am ar 19 Mehefin 2024.
To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on what action it is taking to tackle long ambulance turnaround times. (S6O-03603)
The Scottish Ambulance Service continually engages with health boards, while optimising services including flow navigation centres and the integrated clinical hubs, which provide care for patients at or near home, reducing pressure on accident and emergency departments.
The call before you convey protocol is being used and cohorting areas have been established at sites that are facing challenges, ensuring that ambulance crews are freed up during high-demand periods.
People in the north-east were shocked to read reports of a 96-year-old woman waiting outside Aberdeen royal infirmary for nine hours due to ambulance stacking. By the time that she was admitted, she had not eaten for 14 hours. We must be clear that everyone from the ambulance crew to the hospital staff did their jobs well, but the turnaround times that they are expected to work with, which are already unacceptable, are becoming unbelievable.
After 17 years of the Scottish National Party being in charge of our national health service, what is the cabinet secretary doing specifically at the ARI to prevent stacking? Does he think that it is acceptable to have elderly patients starving and in agony for hours with help just out of reach?
Clearly, the example that Liam Kerr cites is unacceptable. There is no defending that, and I apologise to the patient and their family for the situation that they have endured.
On the direct action that we are taking with NHS Grampian on the pressures in the ARI, I have asked for an improvement plan that will address the pressures in the accident and emergency department and throughout the hospital. There are pressures not just for our ambulance service in accessing the hospital but for the flow through the hospital.
We are also taking direct action with a joint mission with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities on reducing delayed discharge, because our hospital occupancy across Scotland is too high, and that is stopping the flow through the hospital.
It is also fair to say that ambulance stacking is not a unique phenomenon, either to the ARI or to Scotland. Further, the situation is faced elsewhere in the United Kingdom. That is not to say that it is okay to experience that in Scotland; it is just reflective of the fact that there are significant pressures on our health and social care services across the UK—
Thank you, cabinet secretary. I want to get in a supplementary question.
Can the cabinet secretary confirm that, despite fiscal constraints as a result of Westminster Tory cuts, the Scottish Government provided £349.2 million to the Scottish Ambulance Service this year, which is an increase of £15 million on the previous year? Will he provide details of how that funding will be used to recruit additional staff to increase capacity and improve the service?
The Scottish Government recognises the extreme pressure that the system is under, as a result of the on-going impacts of Covid, Brexit and inflation, as well as the UK Government’s spending decisions. We have therefore provided almost £550 million of additional investment to front-line NHS boards as part of the 2024-25 Scottish budget.
The Scottish Ambulance Service received £15 million of that increased investment, taking its funding to nearly £350 million to support the delivery of its services, and we continue to invest in the Scottish Ambulance Service workforce. We have provided funding of £45 million on a recurring basis in 2023-24 to support increases in the board’s capacity. That includes funding for the recruitment of 1,388 additional staff since 2020, 230 of whom were recruited in 2023-24.