Page last updated: 27-NOV-2007

Costs

Costs Book 2007 - Executive Summary

The Costs Book detailed reports are structured to analyse around 90% of the NHSS net operating costs, presenting information on the boards that provide hospital and community care directly to patients.  For 2006/07, this reflects health care expenditure within the 14 health board areas and at two special boards, namely the State Hospital and Golden Jubilee National Hospital - amounting to £7.8 billion.  The Costs Book contains large amounts of data, but some of the principal findings for 2006/07 are: 

  • Operating costs of the 16 NHS Boards analysed in the Costs Book have risen from £7.46 billion in 2005/06 to £7.8 billion in 2006/07, up 4.5%.  The chart below shows a percentage split across the 3 health care sectors.

Costs_exec_chart1_2007.gif

  • NHSS is a major employer with more than 110,000 whole time equivalent (WTE) staff working in the hospital and community sectors.  The pay bill for these sectors in 2006/07 was over £3.8 billion, an increase of 4.6% from the previous year, and accounting for 67% of the running costs of these services.
  • Almost £1.2 billion was spent on prescription drugs - which amounts to 15.1% of the total spend on the three sectors - and is the equivalent of over £230 for every person in Scotland.
  • Hospital expenditures
    o £93 million on cleaning, an increase of over £8 million from 2006
    o £64.2 million on heat and light, an increase of 1%
    o £1.2 million a year to run an operating theatre for 25 hours per week
    o £179 million on 2.9 million attendances for x-rays and scans

  • Hospital costs (average per patient)
    o Attendance at A&E department              £82 
    o Attendance at an outpatient clinic    £105
    o Attendance for MRI scan     £188
    o Attendance for day surgery     £648
    o Admission as a surgical inpatient    £2,684
    o Admission to intensive care     £8,599

Data is also available for each NHS Board.  The following table shows the average cost of a patient stay in an Intensive Care Unit in 2006/07 for each board.

Costs_exec_chart2_2007.gif 

  • Community services
    o £988 million spent on community care, up £29 million from last year
    o Including £63.8 million on child health and £7.5 million on home dialysis
    o 20,000 staff (WTEs) working in the service
    o Over 4.4 million visits by district nurses and community midwives
     
  • Family health services
    o £700 million on primary medical services, provided at more than 1,000 GP practices
    o £275 million on NHS dental care provided by over 2,000 general dental practitioners
    o £67 million on High street Ophthalmic services
    o £1.1 billion on pharmaceutical services provided at 1,175 pharmacies supplying £892 million worth of prescription
    drugs 

A summarised list of the main figures described here, along with the same analysis for each individual board, is available in the following reports:

link to a microsoft excel file R100 [184 KB] - Executive summary, for Scotland and each board

link to a microsoft excel file R100T [234 KB] - Expenditure and activity figures for the last 5 years, for Scotland and each board

link to an adobe pdf file Executive Summary [88 KB] - available as a PDF for printing


Main contact: Email Costs Team