The Scottish Government continues to work closely with partners including Higher Education Institutions, Health Boards, Skills Development Scotland, and the Scottish Funding Council on skills development, employability and widening access to NHS Scotland careers. As part of this work part time, distance learning and earn as you learn models of education, which may benefit rural and island areas, are currently being explored by the Allied Health Professions (AHP) advisory group that oversees the implementation of the AHP Education and Workforce Policy Review recommendations.

The Scottish Government, in collaboration with the Centre for Workforce Supply and the National Centre for Remote and Rural Health and Care is developing a model of sustained ongoing direct support for employers across health, social care, social work and children’s services in rural and island areas to overcome barriers to recruitment and retention The direct support model will consist of three key elements including a Rural and Island Recruitment Forum, a Living Library and a Recruitment Toolkit.

The requested information on what percentage of frontline healthcare staff currently employed by NHS (a) Highland, (b) Western Isles, (c) Orkney, (d) Shetland and (e) Grampian are due to retire in the next (i) year and (ii) five years is not centrally held.

In 2024-25 the Scottish Government has invested £113.5 Million in digital health and care technologies.

Whilst the Scottish Government sets the strategic policy direction for the NHS in Scotland, operational matters including staffing requirements are in the first instance the responsibility of the relevant Health Board. As such, recruitment is a matter for Health Boards. The National Health Service Reform (Scotland) Act 2004 has created a duty on Health Boards to co-operate with each other to secure and advance the health of the people of Scotland, enabling the arrangement of travelling consultants

While the Scottish Government provides the overarching guidance/framework for patient travel expenses reimbursement, NHS Boards are responsible for developing local policy to best meet the needs to their populations, and for assessing eligibly for financial support and level of that support. The cost of reimbursement is met from Boards’ budgets and all Boards must balance value for money with patient need, ensuring that patients are supported in identifying and accessing available support and that patient care is at the centre of all decisions.

The Scottish Government has committed to a review of the overarching patient travel expenses reimbursement guidance. However, a start date for the review is not confirmed at this time; it is important that the review is considered within the context of wider reform on access to health care.

It is recognised that transport to health is a key enabler to ensure equitable access to healthcare, and work to bring travel/transport and health planning closer together is in progress. This work will include bringing local bodies together at a regional level to consider the options for transport to health. This work will also inform how and when a review of the overarching patient travel expenses reimbursement guidance is taken forward.

The Scottish Government recognises that career pathways such as earn-as-you-learn can widen access to health and social care careers, including those who are settled and rooted in our rural and island communities.

That is why, we are funding a dedicated resource within NHS Education for Scotland (NES) to scope the current skills landscape and identify where earn as you learn programmes could be expanded and where further development work is required with the aim of widening the pathways into health and social care careers.

The Rural and Island Workforce Recruitment Strategy will focus on a sustained model of direct support and will take cognisance of broader cross-government work such as the exploration of earn as you learn models to provide a long-term, dynamic and connective approach to support employers to recruit successfully.

The NRAC formula is an objective measure of the need for health care services across Scotland.

Under the existing formula the additional cost of providing health services in remote and rural areas is factored within one of the key components in determining funding allocations, with the formula giving greater weights to areas where there is evidence of unavoidable excess costs of supplying healthcare services.

The Scottish Government have committed to continually review the funding formula. This process is managed by the Technical Advisory Group for Resource Allocation (TAGRA) and supports vital work to reduce health inequalities; ensuring that we continue to allocate funding according to the relative need for healthcare in each Board area. Work is underway to review this, however, funding formulas are inherently complex and the review will take time.

The Scottish Government has provided £168k funding since 2021 to Scottish Agritourism to assist with supporting the delivery of Scotland’s Agritourism Growth Strategy, broken down as follows

2022-23 – £35,000

2023-24 – £35,000

2024-25 – £98,000

The duty to carry out Island Communities Impact Assessments came into force on 23 December 2020. All ICIAs and decisions not to carry out an ICIA are published by the Scottish Government and are readily available to access online.

The Scottish Government conducted an initial survey of residential rehabilitation providers in Scotland and published the results in November 2021. This showed that, at that time, there were 12 reported beds in Highland and 6 in the Western Isles. None were reported in Orkney, Shetland or Grampian.