WAITING time performances in Scotland’s A&E departments have once again deteriorated.

More than a quarter of patients have not been seen within the Scottish government’s target, and some are waiting as long as 12 hours.

NHS Scotland figures have shown that 26.8 per cent of patients visiting accident and emergency departments in the country have had to wait longer than the government’s four-hour target.

It is the sixth time in seven weeks that the proportion of patients admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours exceeded 25 per cent, with the Scottish Government target set at 95 per cent of patients seen in that time.

Figures also show that of the 6,493 patients who waited longer than four hours during the week ending November 21, there were 1,333 who waited more than eight hours and 374 over 12 hours.

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The rise in waiting times has sparked reaction from the Scottish conservatives who have called out Health Secretary Humza Yousaf and said the SNP must ‘get a grip’.

Scottish Conservative health spokesman Dr Sandesh Gulhane said: “Once again we see A&E waiting times unacceptably high and getting worse, despite (Health Secretary) Humza Yousaf’s complacent assurance last week that things were moving in the right direction.

“The Royal College of Emergency Medicine Scotland has rightly pointed out that appallingly high waiting times are leading to preventable deaths – yet the SNP inexplicably criticised the data rather than take action.

“Even with the continued, invaluable support of the UK Armed Forces and the Health Secretary’s desperate efforts to divert patients from A&E to equally overstretched GP services, more than a quarter of emergency patients are waiting more than four hours to be seen.

“I’m deeply concerned by these figures. As the peak winter period looms, the SNP Government must belatedly get a grip of this A&E crisis, or the situation will get even worse.”

The increase in waiting times comes despite the Scottish Government investing an additional £10 million to winter funding for the NHS, and specifically saying it is ‘to get A&E patients to the right care as quickly as possible’.

The funding came after the country’s A&E units were condemned as unsafe and dangerous when the waiting time figures showed performance hitting a record low

However, weekly A&E performance had improved slightly in each of the previous three weeks after recovering from a record high of 30.4 per cent of patients who waited longer than the target time.

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Despite a two-percentage point improvement on the previous week, NHS Forth Valley remains the worst-performing health board with 40.2 per cent of patients experiencing waits of four hours or more.

It is followed by NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (33 per cent) and NHS Grampian (27.9 per cent).

NHS Tayside also became the first mainland health board to exceed the 95% target – seeing 97.6 per cent of its 1,400 A&E patients within four hours – since the end of June 2021.

The only other health boards to achieve that target were NHS Western Isles (100 percent of its 87 patients) and NHS Orkney, with 96.6 percent of its 88 patients seen in that time.