Scotland's accident-and-emergency (A&E) departments have recorded their best December performance since 2009, just narrowly missing a key waiting target.
A total of 94.9% of patients were seen within the four-hour target time, up five percentage points from the previous December.
Ministers have set an interim target for at least 95% of A&E patients to be seen and subsequently admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours.
The latest weekly figures show the target was missed for core A&E departments in the week ending January 24, with 93.8% of patients seen in time.
The Scottish Government said the figure was 6.6 percentage points better than in the same week last year.
The poorest-performing health board was NHS Lanarkshire (91.7%), with Wishaw General Hospital the poorest-performing site (86.8%).
Health Secretary Shona Robison said: "We know that the winter months bring additional demands across the whole health and social care services.
"We have seen that demonstrated over recent weeks but, thanks to the dedication of NHS and social care staff, we have also seen a consistent improvement on last year.
"Today's figures continue that trend and December's A&E performance is the best since 2009.
"We have worked closely with the Royal College of Emergency Medicine to embed improvements and it is encouraging that the college themselves feel all aspects of emergency care are better than last year.
"Performance at core A&E sites during the week ending January 24 is also up more than two percentage points on the previous week, with every health board seeing at least nine out of 10 patients within four hours."
Scottish Liberal Democrat health spokesman Jim Hume said: "Last month saw the highest number of operations cancelled for non-clinical or capacity reasons since the NHS started publishing these figures.
"Almost 20 operations were cancelled for these reasons every day in December and there is no part of the country that has not been affected.
"This will doubtless have caused real concern for patients who have been sent home to wait for treatment."
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