Hairmyres A&E figures mean it’s question time

Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of the East Kilbride News – our first paper of 2018.

Hopefully you have enjoyed the festivities, indulged yourself and are looking forward to getting back to normal over the coming days.

Of course, kids across East Kilbride and Avondale still have a few more days’ holiday before returning to class.

For some people, however, Christmas and New Year has been about working.

Those of you who work in our emergency services have been busy dealing with issues and ensuring we are kept safe or have access to medical treatment when we need it.

It has certainly been a hectic time at University Hospital Hairmyres A&E and, two weeks’ running, waiting times in the department have fallen below both the Scottish Government target and the national average.

You can read more about the figures and the political reaction to them on page 14 of today’s paper.

The NHS is something we are all proud of and the hard-working staff deserve our respect.

I’m sure we’ve all been at an A&E or out-of-hours facility at some ungodly hour yet hugely grateful for the treatment we or a loved one are able to receive.

Free healthcare at the point of need regardless of an individual’s circumstances is something to be treasured but it also needs to be properly resourced and the figures posted by Hairmyres raise interesting questions we intend to ask of health chiefs.

It can’t be right that our A&E department is producing this level of performance when compared to the Scottish Government benchmark, the Scottish hospitals’ average and NHS Lanarkshire’s other two acute hospitals.