The Scottish Government has announced that the reliance committee has met again to discuss the challenges that are being faced by the health and social care sector through the winter.
The meeting, chaired by the First Minister, focussed on the measures being taken to reduce the levels of delayed discharge, as well as finding solutions to care placements and packages for patients that are medically fit to leave hospital.
Statistics have shown a continued improvement recently, with just over 70 per cent of patients being admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours, whilst this can still improve. Additional funding has been made available, however, to Health and Social Care Partnerships that are responsible for the provision of care packages for communities. This is mainly to help them provide 300 interim care home beds for people who no longer need to remain in hospital.
Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister, said:
“The continued improvement in A&E performance is something to be welcomed, but there is still much work being done on safely freeing up hospital capacity and easing pressures elsewhere in the system. That is why we are continuing to pursue a range of measures to enable people to leave hospital as soon as possible when It is clinically safe for them to do so.
“We remain indebted to the health and social care staff in all parts of Scotland who have continued to do an outstanding job, despite the extra challenges that winter has presented.”
The meeting of the Scottish Government Resilience Room was also attended by the Health Secretary, Chief Medical Officer, other cabinet members and senior representatives from NHS boards, as well as COSLA, Integration Joint Boards and the Scottish Ambulance Service.
