NHS Recovery Plan 2021-2026: annual progress update report 2024

Planned Care

We remain committed to reducing waiting times and creating sustainable improvements in our models of care.

Progress on Delivering Commitments During 2024

Increasing capacity – The Recovery Plan set out our intention to increase inpatient/day case procedures by 55,500 by 2025/26, which represents a 20% increase over pre-Covid levels. Inpatient/ day case activity, in the quarter 1 April to 30 June 2024, was the highest since the start of the pandemic and the 10th quarterly increase in a row. Over the 12 months to June 2024, new outpatient activity was over 1.26 million (1,264,565); 2.7% more than the previous 12 months.

As of July 2024, our Endoscopy and Urology Diagnostic Recovery and Renewal Plan has delivered 4 mobile endoscopy units across Scotland, providing 6 additional endoscopy rooms, and a Dyce facility to provide additional endoscopy for NHS Grampian. A national endoscopy surveillance framework, introduced in February 2022, has been implemented in all Boards and holds near-real time information for patients in Scotland having regular endoscopy checks (surveillance).

The National Endoscopy Training Programme has been established within the NHS Scotland Academy to deliver endoscopy and by July 2024, 80 trainees had completed Basic Skills courses, 137 trainees had attended upskilling courses and 54 trainees had attended immersion training at the Golden Jubilee University National Hospital.

To support diagnostic imaging capacity, we provided funding for 7 MRI and 3 CT scanners, providing additional scanning capacity over seven days per week and capacity for 67,000 additional procedures per year. In addition, in 2024-25, we have provided funding to Boards through the £30m additional Planned Care investment to support the equivalent of another CT scanner and 2 MRI scanners with additional capacity of around 58,000 per year.

In August 2024 the Surgical Centre of the Golden Jubilee University Hospital was opened and we are also increasing capacity through Forth Valley. Once fully operational, we expect these 5 National Treatment Centres to deliver an additional 20,000 procedures per annum.

Centre for Sustainable Delivery will work with partners to implement improvements to care pathways across Scotland – The NHS Scotland Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CfSD) has continued to support Boards over the past year with innovation and new models of care. CfSD have established the National Elective Coordination Unit (NECU), , which has helped an additional 3,245 patients to be treated. NECU has also validated over 52,000 patients nationally and identified over 4,500 appointment slots that can now be allocated to patients.

In 2023/24 CfSD has:

• Saved more than 138,000 appointments and avoided 2,249,000 patient travel miles through Active Clinical Referral Triage and saved 71,000 appointments through Patient Initiated review;
• Validated over 88,000 patients through 39 waiting list campaigns avoiding £3.5 million in cost to NHS Boards;
• Onboarded 120,000 Ophthalmology patients to electronic patient records.

Additional funding – Significant activity is now underway following the allocation of an additional £30m investment to target backlogs. This will see around 12,000 New Outpatient Appointments, around 12,000 Inpatient/Day-Case procedures and over 40,000 Diagnostic procedures.

As part of this we provided £1.8m to fund a new national digital dermatology programme to help speed up treatment and reduce waiting lists, potentially reducing demand for outpatient dermatology appointments by up to 50 per cent. Patients in Dumfries and Galloway and Greater Glasgow and Clyde have been the first to benefit from the new Digital Dermatology pathway to allow faster diagnosis and assessment of skin conditions. GPs are now able to capture images of skin conditions and securely transfer to clinicians so diagnoses and follow-up appointments can be arranged. This leads to a better and quicker service for patients. Once fully implemented, the new digital dermatology pathway will help ensure the most urgent cases can be prioritised and provide quicker reassurance and advice for those who do not require a face-to-face appointment. We expect the technology to be deployed nationally by Spring 2025.

We will continue to target resources to reduce waiting times, particularly for those waiting longest for treatment, through maximising productivity and additionality.