Thousands forced to wait as NHS capacity is halved
15,000 fewer routine ops done while A&E numbers fall 50,000
SCOTLAND’S NHS is operating at less than half its capacity a year on from the start of the pandemic.
At least 15,000 fewer routine operations were carried out in February compared with the same period last year.
Thousands of people are also having to wait more than four hours to be seen in A&E – despite attendances plummeting to their second-lowest level on record.
At the Scottish Government’s Covid briefing yesterday, national clinical director Professor Jason Leitch said: ‘January and February is always a perfect storm for A&E.
‘Winter and a second wave of Covid-19 causes challenges both at the front door and downstream inside the wards, where we have had to have beds available for Covid-19 patients – and hundreds of them – during that period. It’s easy to forget that in April, when the numbers are going in the right direction.’
A total of 12,334 routine operations were scheduled in February this year against 27,645 in the same month in 2020, NHS figures show.
This is a rise of 4.3 per cent from 11,830 in January, but a 55.4 per cent drop from February last year.
A total of 80,423 patients visited A&E in February, 47,918 fewer than in the same month last year – before coronavirus was first reported in Scotland.
Only April last year – the first full month of lockdown – recorded fewer visits to emergency wards, when 65,117 patients attended.
February had the second-lowest percentage of patients seen within the Government’s four-hour target time during the pandemic.
Public Health Scotland statistics show 13.8 per cent of patients had to wait longer than four hours, with 14 per cent in January.
According to the figures, 1,786 (2.3 per cent) patients spent more than eight hours in an A&E department before being seen, then were either admitted to hospital, transferred or discharged. A further 483 (0.6 per cent) patients had to wait more than 12 hours.
Fewer routine operations were scheduled during the peak winter months to avoid piling pressure on wards during the second wave of coronavirus. In addition, staff need longer between patients to follow enhanced cleaning regimes and organise their PPE.
NHS services were placed in emergency measures during the first lockdown last year and resumed from June, including the
‘Patients seen a little bit slower’
rescheduling of cancelled operations. But boards are now required to prioritise patients with the most urgent needs to help keep pressure off the system.
Those patients classed as the most urgent get surgery within 24 hours, while those who are least urgent will wait at least three months and possibly longer – although a post-pandemic, maximum waiting time has not been set out by the Government. Chief nursing officer Amanda Croft said: ‘Infection control and PPE all takes longer than pre-Covid.
‘Instead of staff being able to go from one patient to another they need to wash their hands more, wear their PPE and there is obviously a cleaning element. But the staff have been fantastic.
‘There are a lot of things that are different now to pre-Covid that take up time, and that means that patients unfortunately sometimes get seen a little bit slower.’
Dr John Thomson, vice-president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said: ‘Our emergency departments continue to face issues with exit block, patient flow and capacity.
‘As attendances are beginning to pick up, we are struggling to move patients through the system and