The head of the new £84m Queen Elizabeth University Hospital has apologised after it recorded its worst Accident and Emergency performance since it opened in May.

Figures for the week ending October 4th show that the flagship Glasgow hospital managed to see, admit, transfer or discharge only 77.2% of patients within four hours. This is well below the Scottish Government's interim target which expects hospitals to deal with 95% of people within that time.

After the publication of new weekly figures revealed the slump, Anne Harkness, Director of the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital Glasgow, said: “Our Emergency Department (ED) and Immediate Assessment Unit (IAU) were both extremely busy last week and we apologise to those patients who had a long wait to be admitted.

“After a number of weeks where the A&E performance at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital had shown a sustained improvement, these latest A&E figures are particularly disappointing."

A total of 386 patients waited for longer than four hours, with 29 of these in A&E for more than eight hours.

In June the Scottish Government announced a team of experts would be sent in to help staff improve A&E waiting times at the site. Although performance rose markedly as a result, reaching 90% since the end of July, this has now reversed, leading to concerns the hospital will continue to struggle when winter puts further pressure on capacity, for those who need beds.

Ms Harkness said the QEUH was having to deal with more patients than had been predicted and those who needed to be admitted were staying for longer, causing bottlenecks.

She said: “Our analysis for this most recent performance has shown that the new model of care within our Immediate Assessment Unit (IAU) has been seeing significantly more patients than was projected. Elsewhere patients are also spending longer in hospital than we had anticipated.

“We are fully committed to tackling these issues and are putting in place a number of immediate steps to improve the situation.

“Additional capacity will be created within the IAU to tackle the bottlenecks by identifying an alternative location for surgical and urological patients coming through that unit."

Staff would also streamline other clinical processes, particularly those designed to support early discharge of patients, she said: “We are confident that these measures will see us return to an improved performance."

Health Secretary Shona Robison said: "It is clear that improvements are needed at QEUH to further increase capacity and drive down waiting times - patients should expect nothing less.

"The opening of the QEUH involved moving three existing hospitals on to one site and was one of the biggest and most complex of its kind in Europe.

"I have spoken directly with the chairman of NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and have received assurances from the health board that immediate action is being taken.

"While the new hospital campus has greater capacity than the three it replaced, it is right that the health board has recognised that demand at the QEUH has been higher than their planned operating model.

"It is crucial that NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde make early adjustments to this service and Scottish Government officials will be keeping in close contact with the health board as they roll out the measures announced today."

Scottish Labour Public Services Spokesperson Dr Richard Simpson said: 
 
“This is an absolutely shocking state of affairs. For Scotland’s flagship hospital to need specialist support twice in just four months is utterly incredible. It now seems that the handling of the transfer of patients has been completely botched. 
 
“The SNP Government’s A&E target wasn’t met at the hospital in the middle of summer and isn’t being met in the middle of autumn – do the SNP Government really expect hardworking NHS staff to cope in the winter at this rate? 
 
“I asked SNP Health Minister Shona Robison back in May to consider pausing the transfer of patients to ease the burden on the new hospital and she said no. This is a problem made by the poor decisions of the SNP Government, like squeezing health spending in Scotland harder than even the Tories in England.”

The new figures, which cover the whole country, show that across Scotland, 94% of patients were seen within four hours, down from 95% the week before.

A total of 109 people had to wait eight hours or more to be treated while no patients waited 12 hours or more.