The Board's Nurse Director/Chief Operating Officer Gordon Jamieson stated: "All our staff across the service work extremely hard to keep the waiting time for patients to the absolute minimum, and achieving 100% of patients treated within the guarante
ed time is a tribute to their efforts and their commitment to serving the population."
According to the report, access to good palliative care in Scotland needs to improve and it must be more consistently provided for the thousands of people who need it each year.
The Audit Scotland report, Review of palliative care services in Scotland, looks at the provision of care for people with terminal illnesses.
This care is provided both by 'generalists' such as GPs, hospital doctors, district nurses, care workers, and friends and families, and by 'specialists' such as hospice staff and specialist palliative care teams.
The report says most people are cared for by generalist staff, but patients with any condition who need care from specialist services should be able to get this. Currently, specialist care mainly focuses on people with cancer.
The availability of specialist care also varies significantly across Scotland and different areas have different models.
Caroline Gardner, the Deputy Auditor General for Scotland, said: 'More than 55,000 people die in Scotland each year. Palliative care should be an integral part of the support given to patients and their families and carers during the last months, days and hours of their lives."
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