Waiting times in Scotland’s A&E units improved sharply in the week before Christmas, but more than a third of patients still waited too long for treatment.
Public Health Scotland reported 65.1% of people attending emergency departments were seen within the official four-hour target in the seven days to December 24.
This was up from 61.6% the previous week, and the best figure since mid-October.
The number of people enduring extreme waits also fell, from 3,751 to 2,572 (15 to 10.8% of patients) for those waiting eight hours and from 1,726 to 960 (6.9 to 4%) for 12-hour waits.
The improvement coincided with fewer people attending A&E, down from 24,988 to 23,859.
However the figures remained well short of the target for 95% of patients to be admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours.
It has not been met nationally since July 2020.
The worst performing health board in the week before Christmas was NHS Forth Valley, with 41.8% of patients seen within four hours, then NHS Lothian (59.6%) and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (60.7%)
Public Health Scotland also released figures for the whole of November, showing the month had the second worst A&E waiting performance since records began at 67%.
This was slightly down on the same month in 2022, (67.5%), but notably better than the worst month on record, December 2022, when just 62.1% of patients were seen on time.
Tory MSP Dr Sandesh Gulhane said: “Scotland’s spiralling A&E waiting times are utterly unacceptable.
“It’s appalling that a third of A&E patients had to wait more than four hours to be seen in November – with over one in ten forced to wait more than twice that.
“Dedicated NHS staff are doing everything they can, but the reality is that some patients are dying as a result of these intolerable delays.
“The public may have become used to terrifying NHS figures under the SNP’s chronic mismanagement, but that doesn’t make them any less shameful.
“Unless discredited SNP health secretary Michael Matheson takes urgent action to tackle this crisis, we will only see more avoidable deaths as we move into the toughest winter months.”
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