A report by spending watchdog Audit Scotland has claimed that 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 report also highlights that Ayrshire has the lowest ratio of specialist care staff per head of population of any Scottish health board area.

Now the Scottish Conservatives' spokesman on Rural Affairs, MSP John Scott, is calling for action to boost the care of terminally ill patients, particularly in light of Audit Scotland's claim that patients living in remote and rural communities face additional difficulties in getting specialist palliative care.

And he said: "In its report, Audit Scotland calls on health boards to adopt a more joined-up approach to ensure that the thousands of people who need end-of-life care each year are properly cared for, and there are particular lessons to be drawn for the provision of palliative care here in southern Ayrshire.

"Amongst the findings are that patients living in remote and rural communities face additional difficulties in getting specialist palliative care due to their distance from services and the limited outreach capacity of specialist staff based in hospitals and hospices, and there is an obvious lesson here for a large rural area like Carrick.

"The report further highlights that, while in Ayrshire a palliative care strategy was completed in 2004, we are the only mainland board area in Scotland where no palliative care Needs Assessment has been undertaken and, as Audit Scotland asserts, a needs-based strategy is important in helping ensure that efforts to improve palliative care are not ad hoc.

"Another key finding is that the number of specialist palliative care staff in Ayrshire is 4.1 per 100,000 of population, which is the lowest level in Scotland, with the highest ratio on mainland Scotland being Highland with 11.2 specialist staff per 100,000 of population.

"Also, while all health boards are required to gather views from local people on palliative care, NHS Ayrshire and Arran are amongst eight boards who gather those views less frequently than every three months and the report claims that there is little evidence that the NHS boards use the views they gather to improve the planning or delivery of services."

According to Mr Scott: "Audit Scotland does, however, quite correctly, draw attention to the excellent palliative care provided by the voluntary sector and we are obviously very well served here in Ayrshire by the efforts of the Ayrshire Hospice, which is financially supported by NHS Ayrshire and Arran."

The MSP added: "The key message of the report is that a more consistent approach must be taken towards the delivery of palliative care, backed by an appropriate level of specialist staffing, and that is a message that must be acted upon here in southern Ayrshire to help ensure that local people, no matter where they live, have access to the level of care they need."