8. To ask the Scottish Government how the provision of a care and treatment hub at Pitlochry community hospital will improve healthcare for highland Perthshire residents. (S5O-03033)

The care and treatment hub will bring together services such as phlebotomy, wound care, post-operative wound care management and suture and ulcer care and, by doing so, will increase access to appointments. The Perth and Kinross health and social care partnership intends the hub to be open from October 2019. The provision of those services through the hub will free up general practitioner time, allowing GPs to spend longer with patients who need their particular skills.

I thank the cabinet secretary for providing that information. There is a lot of interest in Pitlochry and highland Perthshire in what is being proposed. Will the cabinet secretary tell us how the community will be involved in designing the services that will be available? What information will be made available about exactly what will be on offer from October?

Mr Fraser asks a very good supplementary question about how the community will know what is being made available. I am happy to ask the local partnership for its detailed plan about the various outlets—pharmacies, GP practices and so on—through which it will make that information available to potential patients in the local community and to share that with Mr Fraser. Using social media is always a good idea and might be particularly useful in this instance.

My understanding is that the original thinking and design of the hub came from feedback from patients, but I will make sure that that is the case. I will ensure that patients are involved in the feel of the new hub, through the community council or other means, and, again, will see that Mr Fraser is made aware of that.