THE number of people admitted to hospital with flu last winter nearly trebled in Scotland.
A total of 2,118 hospital stays during winter 2014/15 were associated with patients suffering from influenza, compared to 762 the previous winter.
It also exceeds the total flu admissions for the three previous winters combined - at 1,932.
The figure were detailed as the Scottish Government published reports on winter care for the health service.
The first report, Health & Social Care: Winter in Scotland 2014/15, stated that flu cases were "at a sustained level over many weeks in the January and February period" this year.
It continued: "This is in contrast to the more pronounced peak, but less sustained activity, seen in 2010/11. The number of hospital admissions with any diagnosis of influenza in 2014/15 are higher than the three previous years combined."
The report also highlighted the pressures faced by the health service last winter from bed blocking and lengthy A&E waiting times.
Delayed discharges reached a three-year high of 55,000 bed days in December 2014, while A&E waiting times performance dipped to a three-year low in January this year with NGS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, NHS Lanarkshire and NHS Ayrshire and Arran in particular struggling to meet four-hour patient turnaround targets.
It comes as the Scottish Government published guidance to health boards for the coming winter, which asks them to put in place strategies for additional staffing and "effective systems" to cope with peaks in demand and enable patients to be discharged at weekends or over the festive period.
However, Ellen Hudson, associate director of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) Scotland, said the demands were unrealistic.
She said: “While the report on the winter of 2014-15 highlights the additional number of nursing staff this does not give the full picture – vacancies were up, the use of agency nursing and midwifery staff increased by over 50 per cent and the cost for bank nurses also went up by £11.4m between March 2014 and March 2015.
“Given these figures, we do question how health boards are going to be able to put into practice the guidance issued today by the Scottish Government.”
Health Secretary, Shona Robison, said: “This is the earliest we have issued winter guidance and we will continue to work closely with health boards as we head into winter to learn from and build on the lessons learned from last year."
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