Registration arrangements at GP practices in Scotland regarding who can register a baby or child are based on national regulations. (GMS Schedule 5, Part 2, Regulation 15).

The regulations state that an application for registration with a GP practice may be made on behalf of any child:

• by either parent, or in the absence of both parents, the guardian or other adult person who has care of the child,

• by a person duly authorised by a local authority, where the child is in the care of a local authority under the Children (Scotland) Act 1995(1); or

• by a person duly authorised by a voluntary organisation, by which the child is being accommodated under the provisions of that Act.

This is a matter for individual Health Boards. The information is not held centrally.

The Scottish Government is determined to meet all of the commitments outlined within our cancer strategy ‘Beating Cancer: Ambition and Action’. Since the current cohort of students commenced their training in January 2017, a total of 9 students have participated. Arrangements are in place with Glasgow Caledonian University to deliver the increased endoscopist provision, supported by Scottish Government funding and the university are actively engaging with NHS Boards and students to market the endoscopy modules for future cohorts. We expect to meet the 40% commitment in early 2018.

Information on the cost to each Local Authority of conducting financial assessments for social care services for people over 65 is not held centrally.

Information on admissions to hospital after overdosing on opioids is provided in the following table.

Table 1: Number of people¹ admitted to acute hospitals in Scotland² after overdosing on opioids³, and the number who subsequently died⁴; calendar years⁵ 1999 – 2016.

Source: ISD Scotland Scottish Morbidity Record 01 (SMR01)

Ref: IR2017-01333.

Notes:

1. Patients are counted once each year, regardless of the number of admissions to hospital they may have had in that year.

2. Includes patients admitted to acute hospitals in Scotland, irrespective of admission type and patient’s country of residence. Does not include admissions to psychiatric hospitals.

3. Up to six diagnoses can be recorded within each hospital episode record. This analysis is based on records with opioid overdose diagnoses in any position and within any episode within the patient’s stay. Diagnoses are coded using the World Health Organization's International Classification of Diseases 10th Revision (ICD10). The following ICD10 codes were used to identify opioid overdose, defined as poisoning by:

T40.0 – Opium

T40.1 – Heroin

T40.2 – Other opioids

T40.3 – Methadone.

Multiple substances may be involved in a drug-related overdose, therefore hospital records can include more than one drug poisoning code.

The ICD-10 code selection listed above does not specify if the overdoses were due to illicit drug or prescribed drug use.

All types of underlying causes for overdose are taken into account, including accidental poisoning, intentional self-poisoning, assault by drugs and undetermined intent.

4. People with hospital discharge type ‘death’.

5. Calendar years are assigned based on patient’s date of admission to hospital.

The Scottish Government has completed the first round of stakeholder engagement regarding the Single National Formulary (SNF). An event for the NHS service was held on the 16 May 2017, and NHS National Procurement Scotland were in attendance. The event included a workshop for all attendees to give their views regarding the vision and possible structure of the SNF, and NHS National Procurement Scotland participated in this. There has been no further involvement in the development, implementation and management of the SNF. The role of National Procurement Scotland with the SNF has yet to be agreed.

The Effective Prescribing Programme was established by NHS National Services Scotland, NHS Boards and the Scottish Government to facilitate and support the quality of prescribing and medicines use. The following are the current areas of focus:

• Implementation of Prescribing Strategies

• Effective use of biological medicines

• Clinical consensus to guide best practice in prescribing in particular clinical areas

• Effective use of prescribing support tools

• Effective use of liothyronine

Future areas have yet to be considered and agreed.

Information on patients being absent or going missing is collected by Information Services Division through evidence on abscondment (from detention) This may have limited data.

The number of patients who have gone absent or missing from mental health facilities in each year since 1999 are shown in Table 1.

Patients who have gone absent or missing have only been determined by the code for abscondment. This may have resulted in limited data.

Due to the potential risk of disclosure and to help maintain patient confidentiality some values in the table below have been suppressed. These values are indicated by "<5". For more information see ISD's disclosure control policy:

http://www.isdscotland.org/AboutISD/Confidentiality/Disclosure_Protocol_v2.3_Fullversion.pdf

Table 1: NHS Scotland, 1999/2000 - 2015/2016: Absent or missing patients among SMR04 population, by financial year.

The information that is available is given in the following table. This was produced from a National Records of Scotland (NRS) database which covers all the drug poisoning deaths that are counted by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) “wide” definition. Figures for 1999 are not available because 2000 is the first year for which that database holds information.

The following are among the opioids (including opiates), or compounds containing opioids, most often reported as being involved in deaths registered in Scotland from 2000: buprenorphine, co-codamol, co-proxamol, codeine, dextropropoxyphene, diamorphine, dihydrocodeine, heroin, methadone, morphine, oxycodone, propoxyphene and tramadol.

The table distinguishes between deaths for which only opioids were reported (e.g. deaths for which the cause was given as “heroin toxicity” or “heroin, methadone and dihydrocodeine intoxication”), and deaths for which both opioids and one or more other types of drug were reported (e.g. deaths for which the cause was given as “adverse effects of heroin, pregabalin, tramadol, diazepam and etizolam” or “etizolam, gabapentin, amitriptyline and codeine intoxication”).

For each year, the table shows more deaths than the “Any opiate or opioid” column in Table 3 of “Drug-related Deaths in Scotland in 2016” (which was published by NRS on 15 August 2017). This is because some of the ONS “wide” definition deaths for which opioids were reported are not counted as “drug-related” for the purpose of NRS’s statistics: for example, deaths due solely to co-codamol, co-proxamol, dextropropoxyphene, or tramadol before it was controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act. More on this is available in “Drug-related Deaths in Scotland in 2016” (e.g. paragraphs A3 of Annex A and F5 of Annex F).

Drug poisoning deaths (ONS “wide” definition) registered in Scotland for which one or more opioids (including opiates) were reported*, 2000 to 2016

* the basis of these figures and why there is a break in the series are explained in the paragraph which follows.

There is a break in the series between 2007 and 2008. This is due to the revision of the form on which pathologists provide NRS with more complete information about the substances that were present in a body:

• up to 2007, the form asked for the “principal drug or solvent found in a fatal dose” and “any other drugs or solvents involved in this death”, and the figures are based on all the substances which the pathologists reported;

• from 2008, the form asks for the drugs or solvents (a) “…implicated in, or which potentially contributed to, the cause of death” and (b) “… any other[s] which were present, but which were not considered to have had any direct contribution to this death”, and the figures cover only substances which the pathologists reported under (a), which is the standard basis for NRS’s figures for drugs reported for 2008 onwards.

More information about these matters is available in “Drug-related Deaths in Scotland in 2016” (e.g. paragraphs 2.3 to 2.5).