Commitment to enhancing NHS performance

5 Feb 2015 02:43 PM

More than £30m to improve capacity and quality.

The Scottish Government is creating a new £31.5 million Performance Fund to support capacity and quality development measures in the NHS and social care.

Announced during Deputy First Minister John Swinney’s budget statement, the new fund for 2015/16 will build on work already being carried out to ensure the right health and care capacity is in place to meet the needs of the people of Scotland.

This will include support to maintain hospital performance during transfers to new facilities, such as the new £842 million South Glasgow hospital.

This new fund is part of the total £383 million additional frontline investment the Scottish Government is making to health spending in 2015/16 and comes as Parliament voted on a total annual health budget of more than £12 billion for the first time.

Health Secretary Shona Robison said recently:

“Today’s announcement of more than £30 million to further enhance performance across our health boards and social care sector highlights this Government’s strong commitment to frontline health spending.

“Protecting our public services is an issue right at the heart of this Government and, through this increase to the NHS budget we are determined to continue our clear, consistent and long held commitment to protecting and increasing health service funding. There is no doubt there is pressure on our NHS, but we are acting to deliver record funding and robust policies needed to support the hardworking and dedicated staff of our NHS.

“Indeed record numbers of staff are now working in our NHS and we also have the essential mechanisms in place to ensure quality and care are at the heart of everything we do.

“Today’s funding highlights our commitment to giving our NHS all the tools it needs to provide safe, effective and person-centred care to every patient.

"It will also build on the work already being delivered through the world-leading Scottish Patient Safety Programme, by investing in quality improvement activity.

“As we head towards the integration of health and social care this funding will also support work underway to transform care services which will get people who may be unnecessarily staying in hospital home or into a homely setting.”

The Performance Fund follows on from the Scottish Government’s investment of an extra £65 million to ensure that all territorial health boards receive uplifts which are at least one per cent above the rate of inflation.

This will bring all health boards to within one per cent of parity under the NHS funding formula, NRAC, a year earlier than planned.

It also comes after the Government announced £100 million over three years to address delayed discharge from hospital, with funding being used to support the objectives of health and social care integration.

This follows agreement with COSLA that the NHS and local authorities will work to discharge the majority of patients within 72 hours of being clinically ready for discharge.

The Scottish Government is working with health boards and COSLA on the final distribution of the Performance Fund and further details will be announced in due course.

Notes To Editors

The Performance Fund makes up the balance of the £127.4 million in health consequentials, with a small supplement from additional health resources of £1.6 million.

The £129 million includes:

Boards uplift - £65 million

Delayed Discharge - £30 million

Specialist Nurses - £2.5 million

Performance and quality fund - £31.5 million