How many days were lost to the NHS as a result of staff absence through illness in each year since 1999, also broken down by NHS board.

Information on sickness absence is not centrally held for years 1999-2005.
NHS boards in Scotland report their sickness absence rates based on contracted hours lost rather than days lost, due to different shift patterns in the NHS Scotland workforce. The latest available information is given in the following table. As can be seen, the rate of sickness absence has fallen from a high of 5.55% in 2007 to 4.95% in 2009 and this represents over 1 million more hours being available to NHSScotland.
Further information on the statistics, including information on how the data is collected and notes to aid interpretation, is given in the Background section of the Workforce Statistics website at:
www.isdscotland.org/workforce.
Hours Lost Due to Sickness Absence by NHS Board
Years Ending 31 March
| 2006
| 2007
| 2008
| 2009


| Hours Lost
(Percentage
of Total Workforce Hours)
| Hours Lost
(Percentage
of Total Workforce Hours)
| Hours Lost
(Percentage
of Total Workforce Hours)
| Hours Lost
(Percentage
of Total Workforce Hours)

Scotland
| 13,130,317
(5.23%)
| 14,193,436
(5.55%)
| 13,793,175
(5.28%)
| 13,144,537
(4.95%)

NHS Argyll and Clyde
| 1,062,891
| x
| x
| x

NHS Ayrshire and Arran
| 829,992
| 951,890
| 945,863
| 958,662

NHS Borders
| 226,144
| 242,260
| 251,650
| 250,586

NHS Dumfries and Galloway
| 309,863