THE Scottish Government has been accused of a major oversight after statistics which appeared to show a fall in the number of complaints against doctors and dentists were revealed to be false.
The revised figures released yesterday instead showed that complaints rose by more than one-third last year, overriding statistics published in September which stated that grievances against these services had fallen by 15% between 2011/12 and 2012/13.
A "formula error" has been blamed, but the Tories said the mistake raises questions about the quality of information released by the Scottish Government.
Conservative health spokesman Jackson Carlaw said: "Considering the Scottish Government unleashes all these health statistics at the same time, in the hope they won't be scrutinised as closely, the least we could expect is for them to be accurate.
"This isn't a small statistical error. It's a major oversight which created the impression that doctors' surgeries and dentists were performing considerably better than last year. In fact, the opposite is true and the Scottish Government now needs to explain why there has been such a huge increase in complaints.
"It also has to offer a proper explanation of how such a sizeable mistake like this could have slipped through unnoticed."
The figures, released by the health information division ISD Scotland yesterday, revised the number of complaints against family doctors and dentists from 2992 to 4804 for 2012/13, compared with 3538 in 2011/12.
Nursing leaders said the rising number of complaints was "worrying" and called on the Government to find new ways of delivering healthcare which would better suit the public, such as a strengthening of out-of-hours care.
Theresa Fyffe, Director of the Royal College of Nursing, said: "We all want to see more care delivered safely in the community so more patients are treated in their own homes with fewer admitted to hospital.
"However, the vast majority of GP practices have opted out of providing out-of-hours care which can cause problems for patients.
"Health boards need to ensure that all health care in the community, including out-of-hours, is provided by teams of appropriately qualified healthcare professionals working together to provide safe treatment to people when they need it."
A Scottish Government spokesman said: "These statistics are produced by National Services Scotland (NSS), part of NHS Scotland. NSS are directly responsible for this analysis and presentation and the Scottish Government, as do other users, expects timely, accurate and accessible statistics. Where mistakes like this happen, we expect they are corrected quickly and lessons are learnt.
"Our health service does a fantastic job in the overwhelming number of cases. To give this some perspective, the NHS in Scotland oversees an estimated 24 million GP or practice nurse consultations every year. These figures represent an extremely small proportion of primary care activity.
"But, in an organisation of this size, care can sometimes fall below the standards we all demand. In those cases we encourage patients to give us feedback so the NHS in Scotland can continually improve the care it provides. These statistics demonstrate this is happening."
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