Improving health and social care service resilience over public holidays: report

Report from a review of the resilience of health and social care services over public holidays and in particular, the Christmas and Easter festive periods.


2 Remit and Process of the Review

2.1 Remit of the Public Holiday Review

The Review was established to: [1] examine the way by which health and social care services across Scotland are currently provided over public holiday periods; [2] make recommendations/identify actions for establishing greater resilience of health and social care service over these periods; [3] take into account the needs and expectations of those who receive and those who deliver services.

2.2 Review Group Structure and Process

A programme management structure was put in place at the outset of the Review to underpin an open, inclusive and interactive process. A range of stakeholders were identified and kindly participated in the Review. They are listed in Appendix 1. A Project Initiation Document was developed and agreed ( Appendix 3).

Figure 1: Review Group structure and relationships

Figure 1: Review Group structure and relationships

The Review structure and relationships are shown in Figure 1. The parent Review Group included a wide range of service providers and public representation, including Chief Officer input from Integration Authorities.

Three working groups were established to provide good practice recommendations for: Acute/Hospital; Primary/Community and Social Care.

Information Services Division, NHS National Services Scotland ( ISD, NSS) was commissioned to support the Review (see Section 3).

Each of the working groups met on a regular basis throughout the Review. The parent Review Group met on five occasions.

All groups adopted the guiding principles used for the Primary Care Out of Hours Review: [11]

  • Person-centred - for those who receive and those who deliver services
  • Intelligence-led - making the most of what we know about our people and their needs
  • Assets-optimised – making the most of all available assets and resources
  • Outcomes-focused - making the best decisions for safe and high quality patient care and wellbeing [12]

In addition services should be:

  • Desirable - high quality, safe and effective
  • Sustainable - resilient on a continuous basis
  • Equitable - fair and accessible to all, according to individual need
  • Affordable - making best use of public funds

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