The Audit Scotland annual report sets out our progress under each of our three corporate priorities:
The new contract for GP practices should have been better planned and will take time to improve care for patients. However, there is evidence of improvement in the care of some patients.
Fire and rescue authorities have made progress in reforming services, according to an Audit Scotland report published today on behalf of the Accounts Commission. However, they still need to do much more to ensure they are working as effectively and efficiently as possible and delivering best value services.
In its first report on Best Value at Perth & Kinross Council, published today, the Accounts Commission for Scotland says the council is carrying out good work and has the capacity and ability to build on this, so that further improvements can be made in service performance.
Access to good palliative care in Scotland needs to improve and it must be more consistently provided for the thousands of people who need it each year.
An Audit Scotland report published today, Review of palliative care services in Scotland, looks at the provision of care for people with terminal illnesses. This care is provided both by ‘generalists’ such as GPs, hospital doctors, district nurses, care workers, and friends and families, and by ‘specialists’ such as hospice staff and specialist palliative care teams.
Ten years after the first review of day surgery in Scotland, Audit Scotland has found that the rate of day surgery continues to rise but there remains wide variation in performance among health boards. Performing more operations as day cases, which involve no overnight stay in hospital, could potentially free up about £8 million a year.
Today’s Accounts Commission report, The impact of the race equality duty on council services, says that all councils have developed policies and processes on race equality. They now need to ensure these have a positive impact on services.
The NHS in Scotland has significantly cut patients’ waiting times for diagnostic tests through use of targeted additional government funding and changes to how it manages and delivers services.
An Audit Scotland report published today, Review of NHS diagnostic services, focuses on specific radiology, endoscopy and laboratory services, which provide more than 87 million procedures and tests a year at a cost of more than £280 million.
An Audit Scotland report, The First ScotRail passenger rail franchise, looks at how the Scottish Government’s national transport agency, Transport Scotland, is managing the rail franchise. The report also examines First ScotRail’s performance and the awarding of its three-year extension.
Auditor General for Scotland, Robert Black, said: “Scotland’s trains are a vital service for people in Scotland and there are large amounts of public money invested in passenger rail services.
An Audit Scotland report, Financial overview of the NHS in Scotland 2007/08, finds that the health service had an overall underspend of £26 million on its £10.1billion budget for the financial year ending 31 March 2008. This was the third consecutive financial year that the service had an overall underspend, and during 2007/08 NHS bodies were less reliant than previously on non-recurring types of income to meet financial targets.
