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This information is not held centrally by the Scottish Government.

We know that GP recruitment and retention is an issue for some areas of Scotland. That’s why the groundbreaking new GP contract for Scotland – jointly designed and agreed with the British Medical Association – will help ensure that GPs are able to spend more time with patients and less time on bureaucracy. It will help reduce doctors’ overall workload and make general practice an even more attractive career prospect by allowing GPs to focus on the patients who need them most.

We have recently announced the commitment to increasing the number of GPs by at least 800 over ten years to ensure a sustainable service that meets increasing demand on our services. Our strategy to recruit and retain our existing GPs will be set out in part 3 of the national health and social care workforce plan to be published this month.

The ground breaking new GP contract for Scotland – jointly designed and agreed with the British Medical Association – will help ensure that GPs are able to spend more time with patients and less time on bureaucracy. It will help reduce doctors’ overall workload and make general practice an even more attractive career prospect by allowing GPs to focus on the patients who need them most.

Table 1: Reported GP hours worked, on average, each week for the In Hours period

We know that GP recruitment and retention is an issue for some areas of Scotland. That’s why the groundbreaking new GP contract for Scotland – jointly designed and agreed with the British Medical Association – will help ensure that GPs are able to spend more time with patients and less time on bureaucracy. It will help reduce doctors’ overall workload and make general practice an even more attractive career prospect by allowing GPs to focus on the patients who need them most.

We have recently announced the commitment to increasing the number of GPs by at least 800 over ten years to ensure a sustainable service that meets increasing demand on our services. Our strategy to recruit and retain our existing GPs will be set out in part 3 of the national health and social care workforce plan to be published shortly.

Decisions on the application of a particular course of treatment are a matter for the responsible clinician, in conversation and agreement with the patient.

Regarding the use of Botox to treat migraines, this would be undertaken following a clinical assessment against the criteria detailed in Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN) guideline “SIGN 155: Pharmacological management of migraine”.

Under the Equality Act 2010, individual NHS Boards are responsible for ensuring that they make reasonable adjustments to meet the needs of people with disabilities. These adjustments include ensuring that NHS Boards communicate with people with sight loss in an accessible way. Responsibility for complying with the requirements of the Equality Act 2010 rests with individual organisations, including NHS Boards.

The support team for SCI-Diabetes is currently funded on a 3 year programme ending 31 March 2018. The funding level recognised a need to catch up on a development backlog due to a technology refresh. Moving forward, the same level of development is not anticipated and as such resources will need to be adjusted to take account of this. A final decision on resource levels and budget is still to be taken but it is envisaged that this will be a Business As Usual (BAM) model plus capacity for moderate development.

Abbott’s FreeStyle Libre flash glucose monitoring device was added to the Scottish Drug Tariff from 1 November 2017.

It is now for NHS Boards to consider inclusion on their local formulary and stipulate through guidance the sub-categories of patients for whom this product is recommended.

The Scottish Government does not hold information on the numbers of devices provided in each of the last 5 years.

Requirements for revalidation vary between the nine regulatory bodies; however, the introduction of formal revalidation processes has been relatively recently introduced by the General Medical Council (GMC), Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) and General Dental Council (GDC). NHS Healthcare Improvement Scotland undertakes a formal annual report in relation Medical Designated Bodies appraisal and revalidation completion rates and these are formally published. The NMC introduced revalidation in March 2016 with a three year rolling programme to ensure that all registered nurses and midwives on the NMC register have complied with the first tranche of revalidation. The Scottish Government is currently working together with the NMC, Department of Health and Social Security and the other devolved administrations to ensure that formal, independent evaluation of the progress of revalidation and its impact is monitored and measured.

The nine health professions regulators have each established their own systems for ensuring continuing professional development and fitness to practise. In each case, the responsibility for meeting the conditions for continued registration lies with the individual practitioner rather than their employer. The Scottish Government has no statutory function in monitoring or collating revalidation compliance data.

The Scottish Government, in collaboration with the Scottish General Practitioners' Committee of the British Medical Association, is in the process of establishing the Rural Short Life Working Group which will help to assist in the implementation of the new GP Contract from April 2018, subject to parliamentary procedure.