Record A&E waits in Scotland last year

Latest figures show that the number of patients waiting more than 12 hours to be treated at A&E in Scottish hospitals has hit record levels.

In total, 987 people waited in excess of 12 hours to be admitted, transferred or discharged in November last year, representing a near five-fold increase on the same period in 2018.

The Scottish government says core A&E departments in Scotland continue to be the best-performing in the UK, maintaining that it wants 95 per cent of cases to be completed within four hours of arrival at A&E. However the last time emergency departments hit that target was in July 2017.

The new statistics show 141,868 people attended Scottish A&Es in November 2018. Of that number, 14.5 per cent waited more than four hours to be admitted, transferred or discharge, while 987 (0.7 per cent) waited more than 12 hours, 3,320 (2.5 per cent) spent more than eight hours in an A&E department.

The proportion of people treated within the four hour target (85.5 per cent) has only been lower once since 2007.

Dr David Chung, vice president of Royal College of Emergency Medicine Scotland, said: "Today's data shows that despite November being a relatively quiet month in terms of attendances, the number of patients experiencing long waits has increased considerably.

"Long waits mean patients on trolleys and care delivered on corridors. We must do better by our patients. Poor performance cannot be solely linked to increasing attendances, there's clearly an urgent need to build capacity in the system through restoring the number of staffed beds and building a primary and social care system that meets the demand of Scotland's growing and ageing society."