Patients face longer waits for hospital treatment
‘‘I am clear that current waiting time performance is not good enough
THERE has been an increase in patients waiting longer than the 18-week treatment target in Glasgow hospitals.
The health secretary said the current performance was “not good enough” but she expected it to improve with action.
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde saw a rise of almost 1700 patients waiting more than 18 weeks from referral to treatment in December last year compare the 12 months earlier.
Health bosses in Glasgow have apologised for the longer than expected wait.
In December there were 4042 patients out of 19,166 waiting more than 18 weeks which meant 82 per cent were seen within the target time.
For the same month a year earlier, the figure was better with 2376 out of 21,285 meaning 90 per cent were seen in the target timescale.
Jeane Freeman, the Health Secretary, commented on the Scottish figure where 20 per cent were not seen within the timescale.
She said: “I am clear that current waiting time performance is not good enough and that is why we are continuing to implement our new £850million Waiting Times Improvement Plan.
“As outlined in the Waiting Times Improvement Plan, we will start to see a reduction in long waits once capacity has increased across the service.”
The Glasgow performance is still slightly better than the Scottish average but still below target.
Health bosses in Glasgow said a number of pressures are affecting a number of departments.
A spokeswoman for NHS GG&C said: “More than 82 per cent of our patients are seen and treated within 18 weeks from beginning to end, including all diagnostic tests.
“Unfortunately, there a number of pressures which are proving challenging and some of our patients awaiting orthopaedics, urology, general surgery and some paediatrics specialty appointments are waiting longer than we would like and we apologise for this.”
“The priority has and will continue to be focused on targeting patients with the highest clinical priority and on reducing the number of patients with the longest waiting time.
“The next few months will see an increase in activity aimed at further reducing the number of patients with the longest waits following confirmation from the Scottish Government that additional funding will be made available to increase activity aimed at reducing patients with the longest waits.”