The Scottish Government has come under fire over “appalling” waiting times in accident and emergency – with weekly data showing performance has worsened.
Official data for the week ending May 17 showed of the 28,545 patients who went to A&E, 64.5% were seen and either admitted, transferred or discharged within the four-hour target time.
That is down from 65% the previous week – and continues to be well below the Scottish Government target of having 95% of patients in A&E admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours.
A total of 10,129 people spent over four hours in A&E in the week ending May 17, Public Health Scotland data showed.
This includes 3,404 patients – representing 11.9% of cases – who were there for eight hours or more.
And there were 1,522 patients there for a minimum of 12 hours – with this making up 5.3% of all cases in A&E.
Scottish Conservative health spokesperson Miles Briggs hit out at the Scottish Government and said: “These appalling figures confirm John Swinney’s continued dire mismanagement of Scotland’s health service.”
With Holyrood debating independence on Tuesday, he accused the First Minister of “prioritising his independence obsession at a time when he should be chucking the kitchen sink at trying to fix this permanent crisis”.
The Tory MSP said: “Frontline staff are working flat out, but the SNP’s dire workforce planning means they simply do not have the resources they need to tackle unacceptably long waiting times in A&E.
“Instead of wasting more time talking about independence, John Swinney and his new health secretary, Angela Constance, should be focusing on getting money to frontline services.”
Ms Constance, appointed health secretary in last week’s post election cabinet reshuffle, accepted that “A&E departments are facing sustained pressures”.
She added that the Scottish Government is “working with health boards to reduce waiting times, improve hospital flow and minimise delayed discharges”.
The Health Secretary stressed: “This situation is not unique to Scotland with all other UK nations experiencing similar pressures.”
But Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton added: “When the SNP first came to power there were virtually no 12-hour waits. It now happens for more than a thousand patients every week.”
He insisted: “The only way to cut these waits is to fix the broken social care system. The gaps in community care are a bottleneck that’s causing 2,000 people a night to be marooned in hospital when they don’t need or want to be there.
“You simply cannot fix the NHS without fixing social care.”