Anger as operating theatres stand idle for hours each week

SCOTLAND’S operating theatres lie idle for much of the working week despite growing pressure to cut soaring waiting lists.

Figures obtained by the Scottish Daily Mail show they are used for an average of only 27 hours per week – far short of full capacity.

This falls to just nine hours in one health board area, suggesting some of the costly facilities are massively under-used.

The news comes at a time more patients are waiting longer to be seen – and many waiting time targets are not being met.

Scottish Tory health spokesman Miles Briggs said: ‘Patients will be puzzled as to why some waiting lists are so long, yet certain operating theatres used so sparingly. It suggests staffing shortages are the reason for these huge delays right across the country.

‘That’s more evidence the SNP’s stewardship of the NHS has been pitiful, with lives being put at risk as a consequence.’

Scottish Government data showed theatres were used as little as nine hours a week on average in NHS Shetland.

In Greater Glasgow and Clyde the figure was 26 hours, in Lothian 29, with the national average 27 across 375 theatres. The figures cover April 2016-March 2017.

An NHS Shetland spokesman said: ‘We have two operating theatres to ensure we have resilience, but we only use one of those theatres routinely to deliver the majority of our elective and emergency care.’

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said it ‘provides some of the most complex surgical procedures for patients from across Scotland and cannot be compared to other boards on a like-for-like basis’.

Jacquie Campbell, chief officer of acute services at NHS Lothian, said: ‘NHS Lothian closely monitors its theatre usage and constantly endeavours to use theatre capacity effectively.’

Patients’ campaigners warned some theatres may be unused as there are not enough staff.

Rab Wilson of Action For a Safe and Accountable People’s NHS said: ‘We keep being told there are more staff than ever in the NHS but if that’s the case, why do we have some operating theatres only operating for an average of nine hours a week?’

Medical sources have suggested patients often arrive hours before their operation – rather than the night before, as in past years – which increases the chance of last-minute cancellations as medics find out about complications too late to resolve them.

John Duncan, vice-president of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, said: ‘This is a complex issue, which has arisen for many reasons. While it is important to allow time for cleaning and maintenance, boards set different lengths of operating day, contend with staff shortages and deal with bed pressures, which have become a year-round problem.

‘The data seems to shows relative consistency across most boards for hours in theatre.’

A spokesman for BMA Scotland said: ‘Any operation requires the right surgical and other staff to be available. With unfilled consultant vacancies remaining a persistent problem, there are undoubtedly times when theatres would be available, but the surgical teams who operate in them are not.

‘It is long past time this problem was taken seriously and substantive action was taken to make Scotland a more attractive place for consultants to come to work.’

A Scottish Government spokesman said: ‘The NHS in Scotland carries out around 850 operations on average every day.

‘We have made an additional £50million available to NHS boards to reduce waiting times.’

In its annual NHS review last October, Audit Scotland found it was ‘struggling’. The report said seven out of eight key NHS targets were missed, with standards on many waiting times falling.

‘SNP’s stewardship has been pitiful’