To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to improve NHS services in Dumfries and Galloway. (S6O-04300)

It is for health boards and their planning partners to plan and provide services that best meet the needs of local people, including those in rural areas, in a way that is consistent with clinical best practice, national policies and frameworks. One example that Oliver Mundell might be interested in is that NHS Dumfries and Galloway was one of two boards to implement the new digital dermatology pathway last year, allowing patients to benefit from faster diagnostics and assessment of skin conditions. Once fully rolled out, the programme will impact 400,000 patients in Scotland over three years and reduce waiting lists by 36,000 hours.

It is always good to hear positive examples but, clearly, services are under pressure, with a crisis in dental provision, challenges in the provision of primary care and worrying delays to hospital discharge. One patient in Dumfries and Galloway has been stuck in hospital for 916 days.

Although I accept that such cases can be complicated, surely the Cabinet secretary agrees that that is unacceptable and that it drives growing fears among elderly constituents that if they go into hospital, they might not get back out again. What is the Scottish Government doing to investigate such cases, which are prevalent across Scotland? What is it doing to address the growing challenges around delayed discharge?

I do not know the detail of the case that the member raises, but on the face of it, I agree that it is unacceptable. With longer-term cases, such as the one that he has referenced, there is often complexity, but I am very clear that the current level of delayed discharge, particularly the considerable variation across different areas, is not acceptable.

As a result, the Government has been working with local health and social care partnerships and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities to identify key challenges and barriers to hospital discharge, as well as identifying shared good practice to support improvements. The work includes the provision of more direct whole-system support to areas such as the Highlands and Dumfries and Galloway, which face the biggest challenges with delays.

I am confident that our collaborative work in that space will deliver improvement, but I know that more needs to be done to support it. That is why the 2025-26 budget includes a commitment of an additional £100 million in funding to tackle delayed discharge by, for example, further expanding the hospital at home service. If approved by the Parliament, that funding will support our ambition to grow the hospital at home service to 2,000 beds by December 2026. That would make it the biggest hospital in the country, and would help address hospital occupancy and delayed discharge issues.

Last week, the First Minister outlined that a greater proportion of new NHS funding will go towards primary and community care, and the Cabinet secretary has just outlined greater collaboration and the hospital at home service as examples of that. Will the cabinet secretary say something more about how the 2025-26 budget will ensure that general practitioners and services in communities across D and G will have the resources that they need to play a greater role in our health system, including helping with delayed discharge?

Absolutely. Scottish Government officials are currently determining how best to allocate the additional funding for primary care to ensure that we realise the maximum benefit from that investment. The investment will be used for a range of initiatives, including to increase capacity in general practice and to make it more consistent across Scotland. It will deliver a new acute anterior eye condition service during 2025, which, with the community glaucoma service, will free up to 40,000 hospital appointments a year. We will also be expanding the pharmacy first service, so that more clinical conditions can be treated by pharmacists, and targeted investment in the dental workforce will improve capacity and patient access, with a review of existing incentives for rural practices.

The rate of patients being seen within four hours at accident and emergency departments in Dumfries and Galloway is the worst on record. Although we understand the immense pressure that NHS staff are under, lack of capacity has led to treatment taking place in areas that are unsafe, inappropriate and undignified. Last week, I asked the Cabinet secretary whether the Government would commit to publishing regular data on the care that is taking place in inappropriate settings, but he failed to address the issue of data altogether. I ask him again: does the Government intend to publish regular data on corridor care?

I accept the situation that Carol Mochan has set out with regard to the four-hour standard. We have rehearsed and discussed some of the issues that are driving that, including the hospital occupancy and delayed discharge issues that Oliver Mundell and Emma Harper have referenced. This morning, I met Colin Pullman, the executive director of the Royal College of Nursing, to discuss the RCN’s report on corridor care, and I committed to exploring further how we can, consistently, have a greater sense of what the picture looks like and, therefore, how we can address it.