A&E waiting times best in year but thousands still endure ‘shameful’ waits

A&E waiting times in Scotland are at their best in almost a year, but thousands are still enduring “shameful” waits, figures show.

Statistics released by Public Health Scotland on Tuesday show 69% of people who attended an emergency department in the week up to May 11 were seen and subsequently admitted, transferred or discharged within the four-hour target.

The figure is an increase from 67.2% the week before and the best since the week up to May 26 last year.

But despite the improvement, the number of people waiting longer than 12 hours stagnated, with 1,024 in A&E for half-a-day or more.

While the number of people waiting eight hours or more also remained roughly the same at 2,693.

Health Secretary Neil Gray heralded the improvement, saying: “Scotland’s core A&E sites have been the best performing in the UK for a decade and latest weekly A&E performance continues to show improvement, and is at its highest since May last year.

“This is welcome progress and shows we are moving in the right direction, however, we know some people are facing unacceptable waits for treatment and we are determined to drive improvements.

“We are investing £200 million to reduce waiting times, improve flow and capacity through hospitals and cut delayed discharge.

“To help relieve pressure on the front door of A&E, 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.”

The Scottish Government aims to ensure 95% of all attendees at A&E are seen within four hours, a target which has not been hit since the early days of the pandemic, when attendances dropped significantly.

But Scottish Tory health spokesman Dr Sandesh Gulhane said: “Far too many patients are still experiencing shameful delays at A&E even as we enter the summer months.

“John Swinney may be boasting about healing the SNP but, on his watch, our NHS is on its knees.

“Suffering patients would rather he got a grip of A&E waiting times, as he promised to, rather than being distracted by internal party infighting.

“Humza Yousaf’s covid recovery plan has been worse than useless and successive incompetent health secretaries have failed to show any vision for the future of our health service.

“Patients and staff deserve better than this. Neil Gray needs to finally back our common-sense plan to slash NHS red tape and guarantee resources will get to frontline care services.”

Scottish Labour deputy leader Dame Jackie Baillie said: “Thousands of patients are still spending more than eight hours in A&E every week.

“This corridor chaos is an unrelenting grind for both patients and our hardworking NHS staff.

“Scottish Labour will cut queues at A&E by freeing up hospital beds and restoring the family doctor so patients can be treated quickly and staff can do the jobs they trained for.”