Data regarding inpatient and diagnostic testing: FOI Review

Information requested

Data used to support figures highlighted by the First Minister in a statement made at First Minister's Questions on 23 September.

Response

Further to your correspondence of 14 October, I have now completed an internal review of our response to your request under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA) for details of the data used to support figures highlighted by the First Minister at First Minister’s Question on 23 September.

I have now concluded my review and have decided that a different decision should be substituted as we have not provided you with all of the information you requested. It is my opinion that the original responder misunderstood your request and unintentionally did not provide as full a response as possible. I acknowledge that additional information on Outpatients was provided which was not within the remit of your original request, and we did not provide the information you requested on Inpatients. In these circumstances, I have set out below the additional information which I trust now provides you with the details you were seeking:

Inpatients

Please see the details through the following link to Public Health Scotland’s website: https://publichealthscotland.scot/media/8803/ipdc_aug21.xlsx, which shows that 282,361 inpatients and day cases were seen during calendar year 2019 compared to 274,763 seen during 2018 (an increase of 7,598 surgeries). There were more than 7,500 additional inpatients/day cases in the calendar year 2019 compared to the previous year, a 2.8% increase.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.