NHS stop smoking services quarterly
Local delivery plan standard quarterly, 2019/20 (Quarter 3)

About this release

This release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) presents information on NHS smoking cessation services in Scotland and their progress towards their 2019/20 Local Delivery Plan (LDP) Standard. The LDP Standard for NHS Scotland in 2019/20 is to achieve at least 7,026 self-reported successful twelve-week quits (those people still not smoking after 12 weeks) through smoking cessation services in the most deprived areas.

Data are presented in the form of a dashboard and Excel workbook, which include trend data from 2014/15.

Main points

Nine months (April to December 2019)

• In the first nine months of the financial year 2019/20, NHS Scotland achieved 67.0% (4,710 out of 7,026) of the required annual LDP Standard. If this pattern continued for the remainder of the financial year, NHS Scotland would achieve 89.4% of the required Standard.
• Three out of fourteen NHS Boards met or exceeded three quarters of their annual LDP Standard during the first nine months of the financial year 2019/20. NHS Board performance against their annual LDP Standard ranged from 30.6% to 94.7%.

During quarter 3 (October to December 2019)

• In the third quarter of financial year 2019/20, NHS Scotland achieved 21.2% (1,493 out of 7,026 self-reported twelve-week quits) of the required annual LDP Standard. Three out of fourteen NHS Boards met or exceeded a quarter of their annual target number of successful twelve-week quits during quarter three.
• The types of services accessed to support smoking cessation makes a difference, with those accessing specialist services twice as likely to be still not smoking after 12 weeks compared with those who use pharmacy based services (34.6% and 18.4% respectively).

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. The national database is used by all 14 NHS Boards in Scotland.

From July 2014 information about service activity and outcomes from pharmacy services was recorded through the smoking cessation support tool available within the Pharmacy Care Record. This forms part of the national data that are collected by smoking cessation services for each patient undertaking a quit attempt. The smoking cessation minimum data set are electronically submitted from Pharmacy Care Record to the national smoking cessation database.

Figures are based on total quit dates set (quit attempts) during the year, rather than total number of clients with a quit attempt, so could include repeat quit attempts for the same client.

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. The number of quit attempts in the standard may change between years and should be taken into account when looking at different years. In 2019/20 the LDP standard is at least 7,026 self-reported successful twelve-week quits.

Further information

Background to the national minimum dataset for smoking cessation services is available on the smoking cessation page on the Public Health Scotland website.

Annual smoking cessation services monitoring reports have been published each year since 2007. These can be located at the reports and papers section of the ScotPHO website (external website).

The next release of this publication (Financial Year 2019/20 – Quarter 4 data) will be on 20 October 2020.