WEEKS of deteriorating waiting time performances in Scotland’s A&E departments are pointing towards an even worse “winter storm” for the NHS, the Conservatives have claimed.
Last week saw the worst A&E waiting times on record, with unprecedented numbers of patients waiting more than four, eight and twelve hours to be treated.
Scotland-wide, more than 35 per cent of A&E attendees waited more than the official four-hour target to be seen. The aim is for no more than 5% to wait over four hours.
The Scottish Tories said more than 40% of patients might endure excessive waits this winter, as A&E performance typically gets even worse over the festive season and New Year.
An analysis by the party of the seasonal differences in waiting times since 2015 found performance fell by an average of 5.5 percentage points in winter in Scotland.
Last week 64.9% of A&E patients were seen on time after the performance fell for the sixth consecutive week.
Ahead of the A&E waits for the week to July 10 being published today, the Tories urged SNP Health Secretary Humza Yousaf to rewrite his NHS Recovery plan “urgently”.
Tory MSP Dr Sandesh Gulhane said: ““Right across Scotland, patients are already experiencing a summer of chaos with the longest waits ever for treatment in our NHS.
“Waiting times at A&E hit another record high on Humza Yousaf’s watch last week, yet the worst may still be to come for suffering patients and heroic frontline staff.
“Every year we have seen performance in our hospitals being better in the summer and worse in winter.
“Suffering patients and staff who are beyond breaking point will likely face a winter storm later in the year.
“Make no mistake, Humza Yousaf’s inaction is at the heart of this chaos.”
Last week saw a record 9,108 patients wait longer than four hours in A&E in Scotland, with 3,090 waiting more than eight hours and 1,153 waiting more than half a day.
The numbers in each category were the highest since records began in 2015.
A key driver is a lack of community social care preventing medically fit patients being discharged, leading to a shortage of beds and delays moving people through casualty units.
Staff absences due to Covid are another factor.
Dr Gulhane added: “The Health Secretary and the SNP should be fully focused on getting a grip on the crisis engulfing our NHS, not on their political obsession with holding another divisive independence referendum next year.
“Humza Yousaf needs to accept that his flimsy NHS Recovery Plan produced last year isn’t cutting it and needs rewritten.
“That new recovery plan must support staff at every turn to improve standards, before the winter period hits.”
The Scottish Government said the pandemic had put Scotland’s NHS under severe pressure, but its A&Es still outperformed those in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
A spokesperson said: “The number of Covid inpatients in hospital has been increasing, resulting in reduced capacity in our hospitals and staff absences, and having a detrimental impact on delays in A&E. Despite this unprecedented pressure, last week’s figures showed nearly two-thirds of patients were seen in our A&E departments within the four-hour target.
“NHS planning for Winter is underway across the service. Building upon lessons identified from 2021-22, we are developing a cross-cutting programme of winter readiness to strengthen service resilience and enhance national contingency planning to support our NHS Boards.
“We are also working with boards to ensure a range of measures outlined in our new £50 million Urgent and Unscheduled Care Collaborative programme, to reduce A&E waiting times and improve patient experience, are implemented by Winter.”
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