Waiting time performance in Scotland’s A&E units improved sharply last week, but more than a third of patients still waited too long for treatment.
After the worst figure in almost a year the previous week, the number of people seen within the official four-hour target increased from 59.3 to 64.3%.
Public Health Scotland also reported improvements in the percentage of patients enduring extreme waits, albeit the levels were still among the highest of the last 12 months.
EXCLUSIVE: Councils pondering hiking council tax despite SNP's freeze
While the number of people waiting more than four hours fell from 10,025 to 8,210, the number waiting more than eight hours fell from 4,460 to 3,237 (18.1 to 14.1%).
The number waiting more than 12 hours fell from 2,234 to 1,668 (9.1 to 7.3%).
The improvements coincided with the number of all attendees at A&E falling from 24,634 to 22,975 in the seven days to January 14.
The target is 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 last week was NHS Forth Valley, where 44.4% of patients were seen within four hours, followed by NHS Lothian (58.3%) and NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde (60.1%).
EXCLUSIVE: Juryless rape trial pilot in doubt as lawyers prepare to boycott
At Glasgow’s flagship £850m Queen Elizabeth University Hospital only 41.7% of patients were seen within four hours in its emergency department, the worst figure in the country.
Edinburgh Royal Infirmary was close behind, with just 42% of patients seen on time.
Tory MSP Dr Sandesh Gulhane said: “It is completely unacceptable that more than one in three A&E patients are still not being seen within the SNP Government’s target.
“The failure, for years, to meet this target matters because we know that excess waits in emergency departments lead tragically to avoidable deaths.
“The buck for this stops not with our dedicated NHS staff, but with the dire workforce planning of successive SNP health secretaries which has left them dangerously under-resourced.
“The discredited Michael Matheson, who should have been sacked already, must take action now.”
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 hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel