Latest A&E figures show slight improvement in waiting times

Waiting times at Scotland’s emergency departments have seen a slight improvement, the latest figures show.

Data from Public Health Scotland, released on Tuesday, shows that 8,180 attendees at A&E departments faced a wait of more than four hours in the week up to July 10.

This is down from last week’s report of 9,108 patients under the same measurement.

Some 24,603 people attended emergency departments across Scotland during the week the figures cover, meaning 66.8% were seen and admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours.

A target set by the Scottish Government aims for 95% of patients to be seen and subsequently discharged or admitted within this timeframe.

A further 2,566 patients spent more than eight hours waiting to be seen, while 909 attendees faced waits of more than 12 hours.

It came as the Scottish Conservatives warned a “winter storm” could arise if standards in Scotland’s NHS do not improve in the next few months.

Analysis carried out by the Tories suggests that A&E performances against the four-hour target time are usually worse during winter months than they are in the summer.

On average, the party said, performance in emergency departments has been down by more than five percentage points compared to the summer.

This gap widened to nine points in 2017 and 2020, it said.

Dr Sandesh Gulhane, health spokesman for the Scottish Conservatives, has now suggested the Scottish Government’s NHS Recovery Plan needs to be “urgently rewritten” before the winter months roll in.

He 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.

“Waiting times are already at a record high and the number of patients waiting for treatments is ever increasing.

“Suffering patients and staff who are beyond breaking point will likely face a winter storm later in the year.”

Dr Gulhane said the NHS Recovery Plan “isn’t cutting it”, and that a new document should “support staff at every turn to improve standards, before the winter period hits”.

But a Scottish Government spokesman said A&Es north of the border were the “best performing” in the UK and had been “outperforming those in England, Wales and Northern Ireland for over six years”.

“NHS planning for winter is under way 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,” the spokesman said.

“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.”