Improving emergency care in our NHS is a priority.

I recognise that, while the majority of patients receive the right care at the right time, some patients, sometimes, may not have experienced the best our NHS has to offer.

Last year the Scottish Government gave health boards across Scotland an additional £3m to help manage winter pressures and reduce the time people have to spend in hospital.

As we deal with the demands of an ageing population, we are seeing an increase in admissions, adding even more pressure to staff in hospitals and communities. On average, around three people present to emergency departments every minute of every day.

I have taken action to make sure people receive the right kind of care, in the right place and at the right time and, where that involves emergency care, they are seen promptly and effectively where care can best be delivered.

We have introduced a bill which will require NHS boards and local authorities to integrate the services they provide, to help ensure more care is provided at home or in a homely setting, and that no-one is in hospital longer than necessary.

The picture painted by the report from the College of Emergency Medicine last year was concerning but, since then, we have worked closely with the college and will oversee substantial investment across health and care services worth some £50m through our unscheduled care action plan.

There will be a wide-ranging approach across Scotland, building on available expertise and introducing new systems of working to deliver and sustain improvements in emergency care.

Improvements include increased staffing and investment and the introduction of local plans across Scotland.

An additional £1.8m has been invested in increasing the number of consultants working in Scotland's emergency departments, and the action plan will change the way people are seen when admitted to hospital to make sure that they are treated as promptly as possible.

This will build on the increase in accident and emergency consultants, rising by 96.7% between September 2006 and March 2013. The Action Plan will also recruit 10 more by the end of this year. I have also brought together a new taskforce to oversee this process, which involves experts from across Scotland and across the medical profession.

Their work will enable us to take action to strengthen unscheduled care in Scotland with a priority of focusing on the flow of patients through the system, which will help to reduce unnecessary delays in hospitals.

In addition, a bed planning initiative is being developed to support boards to ensure hospitals and communities have the right beds in place to treat patients.

It will ensure health boards and their partners maintain the appropriate number of beds for their populations and will help the new partnerships formed by health and social care integration plan ahead. It will also be used to continually review bed numbers and ensure decisions are based on evidence.

We will also conduct an analysis of bed-planning processes across health boards to identify inconsistencies and where improvements can be made.

NHS Dumfries and Galloway will test our new planning model.

Learning from this pilot will be incorporated in the final version of the bed-planning initiative before it is made available to all boards late next year.

There should be no doubt that emergency care remains a priority for the Scottish Government. We have already taken action and we are delivering practical, long-term solutions that will sustain our NHS into the future.

I believe our system works well but I am not complacent and all systems need checks and balances. That is why we have a balanced approach to scrutiny and improvement including announced and unannounced inspections, public annual reviews for all boards and improvement programmes that have international recognition. There are many ways staff and patients can alert us to problems including complaints, the Patient Opinion website and the confidential alert helpline. All of this makes me confident in our NHS and reassured that we can spot difficulties and support NHS boards to solve them.

Alex Neil is Cabinet Secretary for Health.