The number of new entrants employed by the Scottish Government’s additional funding in an National Treatment Centre
Official statistics in development
1 Aim
To report the number of people employed by the Scottish Government’s additional funding in the National Treatment Centres, and to report how many of these people are new entrants to NHS Scotland.
2 Executive summary
The workforce reported includes people employed by the Scottish Government’s additional funding in a National Treatment Centre (NTC). We include people employed in NTCs that have opened or are opening in 2023. A person is defined as a new entrant if their job in an NTC was the first time they were recorded in NHS Scotland.
On 30 September 2023 there were 370 people employed by the Scottish Government’s additional funding in an NTC in Scotland (excluding National Waiting Times Centre). Of these, 34% (126 headcount) were new entrants.
An alternative data source and measurement for the workforce at the National Waiting Times Centre was used. The National Waiting Times Centre have recruited 249 people during phase 1 and 2 of development using the Scottish Government’s additional funding. Of these, 226 were still employed in the same post at 30 September 2023, and 61 (27%) of the current employees were identified as new entrants to NHS Scotland.
3 National treatment centres
The National Treatment Centre (NTC) programme is an investment by the Scottish Government to support a national network of purpose-built healthcare facilities across Scotland for planned and diagnostic care. The new facilities will be an important resource both locally and nationally providing:
- an increase in capacity to support patients to access treatment
- increased flexibility for patients accessing treatment
- support collaborative working across territorial NHS Boards
The following health boards have already opened or will be opening their NTC in 2023: Golden Jubilee Phase 1 (Nov 2020), NHS Fife (March 2023), and NHS Highland (April 2023), NHS Forth Valley (later in 2023), and Golden Jubilee Phase 2 (later in 2023).
4 Method
The methods used to report the measures described in the aim are based on the introduction of finance codes to identify people employed by the Scottish Government’s additional funding for the NTCs. A different approach, described in Section 4.1, is adopted to report people employed by National Waiting Times Centre.
NHS Scotland employment data are sourced from the Scottish Workforce Information Standard System (SWISS). These data are fed by NHS board HR and Payroll systems.
National guidance was circulated to data providers explaining the use of financial coding to identify staff employed by the Scottish Government’s additional funding in an NTC. This method requires health boards to introduce the finance codes, and then send the finance codes to NES.
NES takes monthly extracts of the national employment data from SWISS. These data are processed and stored in the NES data warehouse. Some of these employment data are published as part of the NHS Scotland Workforce Official Statistics publication.
Staff working in an NTC are identified in the employment data using the finance codes provided from boards. In the case where a person’s employment is split between NTC and non-NTC roles, additional HR fields are used to identify the proportion of that person’s time that is allocated to the NTC.
People employed by the Scottish Government’s additional funding in an NTC are defined as new entrants to NHS Scotland, if they were not recorded in NHS Scotland employment data before they started working in an NTC.
Staff working in an NTC who are not employed using the additional funding, for example, existing services relocated to an NTC, are not included in these figures.
The occupational distribution of NTC employees can be found in the NTC employment dashboard on TDI.
4.1 National Waiting Times Centre
The Scottish Government’s additional funding for the National Waiting Times Centre (NWTC) covers two phases of recruitment. Recruitment for phase 1 development of the Eye Centre was completed in early 2021, and recruitment for phase 2 of the NWTC expansion started in 2021 and is ongoing.
Due to the hybrid workforce model and financial coding structure, NWTC are unable to adopt the financial coding to identify staff employed by the Scottish Government’s additional funding. NES and data providers at NWTC worked closely to develop a solution for reporting the additionally funded workforce. This process took the Code of Practice for Statistics into consideration, focussing specifically on methods, quality assurance processes, and the relevant limitations and risks. We engaged with key stakeholders throughout.
The agreed approach involves NWTC providing NES with an extract from their recruitment tracker monitoring the status of each post financed by the Scottish Government’s additional funding. These data are linked to the SWISS employment data to identify the people who are still in post at the 30 September 2023, and, of these, who had NHS Scotland employment before they started working in the additionally funded post.
The main limitation of this approach is that the measurement for the additionally funded workforce at NWTC is not directly comparable to that used for other Boards due to the different data sources available. The data available from NWTC only includes those recruited first to each of the additional funded posts. More specifically, if a person recruited leaves an additional funded post, back fill for this post is not reported via the recruitment tracker. It is therefore not possible to track any person who is subsequently recruited, and the number of people employed will be under-reported. Assuming that NWTC replaces any individuals who leave, the difference between number recruited and number still employed is an estimate of the scale of under-reporting.
These data have been quality assured locally and nationally. We matched all except six National Waiting Times Centre records to the national employment data. These records are excluded from this paper and flagged to NWTC for investigation.
5 Results
There were 370 people working in an NTC in an additionally Scottish Government funded post on 30 September 2023 in NHS Scotland (excluding National Waiting Times Centre). Of these people, 126 (34%) were new entrants to NHS Scotland.
The chart below shows the number of new staff varies between boards: 21 headcount (22%) of the people employed in NHS Forth Valley were new, compared with 82 headcount (43%) in NHS Highland.
Footnote:
1. The data reported for NHS Fife does not include staff who work across a range of sites in, for example, portering and domestic teams, as local systems were not updated in time for the national extract. Therefore, the number published for NHS Fife is under-reporting by approximately 10 WTE.
There is also variation between job families as the chart below shows.
Footnote:
1. The data reported for NHS Fife does not include staff who work across a range of sites in, for example, portering and domestic teams, as local systems were not updated in time for the national extract. Therefore, the number published for NHS Fife is under-reporting by approximately 10 WTE.
5.1 National Waiting Times Centre
Phase 1 recruitment for the Eye Centre at the NWTC ending early 2021. 68 people were initially recruited over an two year period. Of these, 56 are still employed in NWTC at 30 September 2023, and 7 (13%) of the current employees were identified as new entrants to NHS Scotland.
Phase 2 recruitment for the NWTC expansion started in 2021 and is ongoing. Over this period NWTC have recruited 181 people. Of these, 170 are still employed in the same post at 30 September 2023, and 54 (32%) of the current employees were identified as new entrants to NHS Scotland.
These figures do not include any people recruited to replace people who have left during initial phase 1 and phase 2 recruitment.
6 Official statistics in development
In June 2023 these statistics were first released as management statistics. As of December 2023, these statistics are released as official statistics in development.
These statistics will be reported twice a year in June and December with data at 31 March and 30 September.
NES Data Group are working with, data providers and users, and our colleagues in Statistical Governance to develop these statistics as Official Statistics. If you have any feedback or comments on these outputs please get in touch with the Data Group.