Health Secretary urged to take ‘decisive action’ on A&E performance

Health Secretary Neil Gray is being urged to take “decisive action” to deal with the waiting times “crisis” in Scotland’s accident and emergency departments – despite the latest weekly figures showing some improvement.

In the week ending Sunday March 3, two-thirds (65.3%) of the 26,055 people who attended A&E were seen and either admitted, transferred or discharged within the four-hour target.

That is up from the 64% achieved the previous week, but still well below the Scottish Government’s target of 95%.

The latest figures from Public Health Scotland show 9,045 patients were in the emergency department for longer than four hours.

This includes 3,048 who were there for eight hours or more, and 1,206 who spent at least half a day in A&E.

According to the data, only one regional health board met the 95% target in the week ending March 3 – NHS Western Isles dealt with 97.7% of patients inside four hours.

There were three hospitals where less than half of A&E patients were admitted, transferred or discharged within the target time – Forth Valley Royal Hospital in Larbert dealt with 43.3% of patients in this time, while the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh and Aberdeen Royal Infirmary achieved 45.5% and 49.8% respectively.

The Conservatives said the figures show Mr Gray needs to take “decisive action to tackle this waiting time crisis directly”.

Tory health spokesman Dr Sandesh Gulhane said: “It is appalling that it’s now the norm for more than a third of Scots to wait over four hours to be seen in our A&E departments.

“With the NHS’s peak winter period behind us, we should be seeing significant improvements. But due to SNP mismanagement we’re not – and lives are being needlessly lost as a result.

“These unacceptable delays are a direct result of the SNP’s dire workforce planning and Humza Yousaf’s failed Covid recovery plan.

“As a practising GP, I know how hard my frontline colleagues are working to provide the highest standard of care for patients, but they simply don’t have the resources to meet the huge demands placed upon them.”

A Scottish Government spokesperson said:  “We know that the system remains under sustained pressure, and waiting times are longer than we want them to be for too many patients.

“Despite this, weekly statistics show continued improvement in A&E performance in recent weeks.

“We recognise that long delays remain too high and we continue to work with boards to reduce these instances.

“A&E performance is impacted by pressures from across the wider health and social care system which is why our unscheduled care collaborative programme is taking a whole system approach as we work with health boards to deliver sustained improvement.”