NHSScotland Chief Executive's Annual Report 2014/15

Foreword

Quality is at the heart of our 2020 Vision – it drives our approach to improving the health of the population and to developing new models of safe, person-centred and effective health and social care.

Paul Gray

I am very pleased to present this, my second NHSScotland Chief Executive’s Annual Report.

Once again, the achievements outlined in this year’s report are a tribute to the outstanding commitment of all NHSScotland staff and their focus on improving the quality of care that we deliver to the people we serve.

Quality is at the heart of our 2020 Vision – it drives our approach to improving the health of the population and to developing new models of safe, person-centred and effective health and social care.

This focus on quality means that Scotland is internationally recognised for its record on patient safety.

Our most recent data shows a 15.7 per cent reduction in Hospital Standardised Mortality Ratios since the implementation of the Scottish Patient Safety Programme in 2008; and during this reporting year, cases of Clostridium difficile in patients aged 65 and over were at their lowest level since monitoring began.

Through the integration of health and social care, services are being empowered to work in a co-ordinated way with patients, their families and carers, to understand what matters most in their lives, and to support them to achieve the outcomes that are important to them.

Satisfaction with NHSScotland remains high. Eighty-nine per cent of hospital inpatients who participated in the Scottish Inpatient Patient Experience Survey 2014 reported overall care and treatment to be good or excellent and 87 per cent who responded to the Health and Care Experience Survey 2013/14 rated the overall care provided by their GP practice as good or excellent.

The staff I meet strive day and night, day in, day out, to deliver person-centred, compassionate care, in partnership with a whole range of ancillary and supporting services from estates to procurement to catering.

At the same time as delivering this high level of care, NHSScotland continues to operate within an increasingly challenging context, facing ongoing pressures of poor patterns of health and health inequalities, an ageing population, and continuing tight finances.

We are addressing these challenges as we work towards our 2020 Vision, but at the same time we need to look to a longer horizon to develop new ways of improving the health and wellbeing of the population.

We must address how we will deliver high quality, patient-focused, local health and social care services in the future.

Effective partnership working with all our stakeholders, together with engagement through the Healthier Scotland national conversation will continue to be the trademark of our approach.

We are on the verge of real, fundamental change within our NHS in Scotland, and I am proud to be leading the exceptional people who will contribute to that change.

Paul Gray

Chief Executive of NHSScotland and Director-General Health and Social Care