NHS stop smoking services quarterly
Local delivery plan standard 2022/23 (quarter 3)

About this release

This publication was revised on 5 October 2023. The revision includes corrected figures for NHS Forth Valley, NHS Highland, NHS Lanarkshire, NHS Shetland and Scotland as a whole where the number and percentage of successful 4-week and 12-week quits are being reported for 2021/22 and 2022/23. Due to a data quality issue, calculations for successful 4-week and 12-week quits were missing a small percentage of smoking cessation outcomes records originating from non-pharmacy based smoking cessation services. This had a varying effect on NHS health board level figures and a minimal effect on national analysis (less than 3% for both 2021/22 and 2022/23 12-week LDP quits). The numbers of quit attempts, regardless of outcomes at 4 and 12 weeks, were not affected. Please refer to the metadata document for detailed information regarding the changes.

This release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) presents information on NHS Stop Smoking Services in Scotland and their progress towards their annual Local Delivery Plan (LDP) Standard. The LDP Standard for NHS Scotland in 2022/23 is to achieve at least 7,026 self-reported successful twelve-week quits through smoking cessation services in the 40% most deprived areas (60% in NHS Island Boards).

Main points

Bar graph of NHS Health board performance against the LDP Standard.

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Scotland and NHS Board performance against the LDP Standard at end of Q3

• During Q3 of 2022/23, NHS Scotland achieved 59% (1,034 quits out of 1,757) of the required quarterly LDP Standard.
• At the end of Q3, 2 out of 14 NHS Boards are currently on target to meet or exceed their annual LDP Standard. NHS Board performance against their annual LDP Standard ranged from 28% to 102%.

Background

In July 2005 a national smoking cessation database was set up to capture data on people presenting to NHS services in Scotland for help to stop smoking. The database is designed to collect the national minimum dataset for smoking cessation services from all 14 NHS Boards in Scotland. The minimum dataset is the mandatory client information required for national monitoring purposes, developed by PATH (Partnership Action on Tobacco and Health).

From July 2014, information about service activity and outcomes from pharmacy services was recorded through the smoking cessation support tool available in the Pharmacy Care Record. This forms part of the minimum dataset. The smoking cessation minimum data set is electronically submitted from Pharmacy Care Record to the national smoking cessation database.

Figures are based on total quit attempts set during the year, rather than total number of people with a quit attempt, so could include repeat quit attempts for the same person. The LDP Standard changed in 2018/19 to exclude quit attempts in prisons, therefore comparisons of quit attempts prior to 2018/19 are based on different definitions and are not valid.

Further information

Background to the national minimum dataset for smoking cessation services is available on our website.

The next release of this publication (Financial Year 2022/23 – Quarter 4 data) will be December 2023.