NHS stop smoking services quarterly
Local delivery plan standard quarterly, 2019/2020 (quarter 4)

About this release

This release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) presents information on NHS smoking cessation services in Scotland and their progress towards their April 2019 to March 2020 Local Delivery Plan (LDP) Standard. The LDP Standard for NHS Scotland in April 2019 to March 2020 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 financial year April 2014 to March 2015 onwards.

Main points

Financial year 2019 to 2020

• From April 2019 to March 2020, NHS Scotland achieved 97.2% (6,828 out of 7,026) of the required annual LDP Standard.
• Five out of fourteen NHS boards met or exceeded their annual LDP Standard from April 2019 to March 2020. NHS board performance against their annual LDP Standard ranged from 52.6% to 126.7%.

During quarter 4 (January to March 2020)

• From January to March 2020, NHS Scotland achieved 29.0% (2,041 out of 7,026 self-reported twelve-week quits) of the required annual LDP Standard. Ten out of fourteen NHS boards met or exceeded a quarter of their annual target number of successful twelve-week quits during quarter four.
• 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 (39.5% and 18.6% 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 people with a quit attempt, so could include repeat quit attempts for the same person.

The LDP Standard changed from April 2018 to March 2019 to exclude quit attempts in prisons, therefore comparisons of quit attempts prior to this 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. From April 2019 to March 2020 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 PHS website.

The date for the next release of this publication (from April 2020 to March 2021 – quarter 1 data) is to be confirmed, and will be released as "NHS Stop Smoking Services – Local Delivery Plan Standard".