NHSScotland: national access policy

1. Introduction

The NHSScotland National Access Policy has been updated to provide a national approach and understanding of how Health Boards should ensure equitable, safe, clinically effective and efficient access to services for their patients.

This policy sets out principles that will help ensure that systems are in place to optimise the use of facilities and available capacity in order to deliver high-quality, safe patient care.

Health Boards should ensure that they have processes and resources in place to deliver the responsibilities described in the National Access Policy and that Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) are established to ensure the requirements of this Policy are delivered.

Each Health Board will also produce a Local Access Policy, setting out the details of how these principles apply to their local services e.g. possible and reasonable service locations.

Each Local Access Policy must be developed with consideration given to local patients, to be open and transparent, be approved by the Health Board and be made widely available. This includes publication on the Health Board’s website.