Day surgery in Scotland – podcast transcript
1.	What’s this report about?

This report looks at the NHS in Scotland’s progress in meeting Scottish Government targets for performing more operations as day surgery, rather than admitting those patients into hospital for an overnight stay. 
2.	What have you found?

We found that the percentage of operations undertaken as day surgery has continued to improve over the past 10 years.  But performance varies across Scottish health boards and this is not explained by differences in location or patients’ circumstances.  There is variation within boards in the percentage of day surgery for individual procedures.  For example, the percentage of laparoscopies carried out as day surgery varies from just under 60% in Highland to over 80% in Forth Valley.
There is still scope to carry out more operations as day surgery.  We estimate that meeting the new national target for day surgery (which is 75% of procedures) could potentially free up about £8 million of resources a year.  In general, Scotland continues to have lower day surgery rates than England so there is scope for increasing day surgery rates further.
3.	What is the impact/importance on the public?

There are lots of benefits for patients which can be achieved by increasing the percentage of procedures undertaken as day surgery. This includes avoiding an overnight stay in hospital which can disrupt their home life, not having to wait so long to get their operation and having a less invasive procedure.  Day surgery also promotes better outcomes for patients and has benefits for staff.
In the wider public interest, day surgery can often provide the same quality of care for less cost. This is an area where the health service can achieve efficiency savings.
4.	What do you want to see happen as a result of your report?
We recognise that progress has been made by health boards but we expect our report to maintain the focus on day surgery. In particular, we’d like to see improvements in recording outpatient activity which has historically been poor and has not kept pace with the changes in clinical practice.