A&E ‘still in crisis mode’, warn Tories despite best performance for 11 months

Ministers have been told Scotland’s NHS is “still in crisis mode” as the latest weekly figures revealed a rise in people having long waits in accident and emergency.

Monthly figures show waiting times performance in Scotland’s A&E departments in April was the best for almost a year, with 71.1% of patients either admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours.

That was the highest proportion of patients treated within the target time since May 2024.

But separate weekly figures for the week ending May 25 show 67.2% of patients in A&E were admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours – down from 69.8% the previous week.

The Scottish Government’s target is for 95% of patients in A&E to be dealt with within four hours.

Public Health Scotland data for the week ending May 25 shows 9,350 patients spent longer than four hours in the emergency department – up from 8,803 the previous week.

A total of 2,949 patients waited eight hours or more in A&E, with 1,117 there for at least 12 hours – with these totals up from 2,511 and 957 the week before.

Scottish Conservative health spokesman Dr Sandesh Gulhane said: “We are now well into summer but our NHS is still in crisis mode under the SNP.

“Nationalist ministers should hang their heads in shame at these statistics. It’s a national disgrace that nearly a third of patients are waiting more than four hours to be seen at A&E, because we know these lengthy delays lead to avoidable deaths.”

Dr Gulhane, who is a GP as well as an MSP, added: “Patients are suffering and staff are burning out.”

He insisted Health Secretary Neil Gray “needs to face the music” and must now “surge resources to the frontline”.

The Health Secretary however stressed that monthly A&E performance “is at its best since last May”.

A total of 12,377 (9.2%) patients spent more than eight hours in A&E over the course of April – down from 13,350 (9.6%) in March.

The number of patients with waits of 12 hours or more fell from to 5,479 (4%) in March to 5,065 (3.7%) in April.

Mr Gray said: “Scotland’s core A&E sites have been the best performing in the UK for a decade and latest figures show monthly performance is at its best since last May – with long waits also decreasing by 7.6%.”

The Health Secretary thanked “all staff working in emergency care for their outstanding efforts on behalf of patients”.

But he added: “We know some people are still waiting too long for treatment and we are determined to drive improvements.

“We want to shift the balance of care from acute to community and to do this we will deliver direct access to specialist frailty teams in every emergency department by summer 2025 and expand Hospital at Home to at least 2,000 beds by the end of 2026.”

Labour health spokesperson Dame Jackie Baillie said: “The queues at A&E are getting longer – the SNP cannot fix the chaos they created.

“Our hardworking NHS staff are doing the best they can but they cannot plaster over the SNP’s incompetence forever.”