An extra £3 million is to be given to NHS boards to help ease the expected increase in demand over winter, the Health Secretary has announced.
The money will be used to improve patient flow through A&E departments, hospitals wards and support people back to their homes as soon as possible.
It comes as the latest weekly figures show 92.9% of people attending emergency departments in the week ending November 13 were seen within four hours, down from 93.6% in the previous week.
Of those forced to wait longer, 163 patients spent more than eight hours in an emergency department and 15 patients waited more than 12 hours.
Shona Robison said the £3 million funding adds to the previously announced £9 million to support A&E departments over winter, and £30 million specifically to reduce delayed discharge this year.
Speaking at a Royal College of Emergency Medicine Scotland event, the Health Secretary said: "We know that over winter, demand on our health service increases. That is why we are working closely with our NHS and social care services to ensure they have the right plans in place.
"Scotland is well-prepared to head into winter. We have the best A&E performance anywhere in the UK, thanks to our joint collaboration with the Royal College of Emergency Medicine and Academy of Royal Colleges. And since the launch of our joint 'Six Essential Actions', we have outperformed all other UK nations for the last 19 months.
"However there is no room for complacency and we know that winter presents significant challenges for our health service. This additional £3 million of funding will give an extra boost to health boards' and their partners' winter planning."
But Scottish Labour said waiting times are getting longer as the weather turns colder.
"It isn't good enough for the SNP to point at the NHS in England - patients and staff across Scotland want the Scottish Government to be aiming higher than just beating (UK Health Secretary) Jeremy Hunt's efforts," the party's health spokesman Anas Sarwar said.
"With performances continuing to drop, it is increasingly difficult for SNP Health Secretary Shona Robison to justify cutting winter resilience funding for our A&E.
"The SNP needs to ditch the crisis management approach to our NHS and come up with a long-term plan. Labour would use the powers of the Scottish Parliament to invest in social care and take the pressure off of our hospitals and our NHS staff."
Gabrielle Stewart, Scottish policy officer at the College of Occupational Therapists, said: "Obviously any increase in the resources available to NHS Scotland is welcome. However I would encourage local health boards to spend it in the ways that the evidence shows it has the most impact.
"Last week the College published a report which demonstrated how greater use of occupational therapists in A&E departments and in acute services could reduce admissions by up to 80%, reduce stays on acute wards by an average of 8.5 days, and support rapid, safe and sustainable discharge from hospital."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here