Robison criticised for blaming ‘beast’

Health Secretary Shona Robison has been blasted for blaming the beast from the east for thousands of patients waiting too long for treatment.

NHS Tayside posted the second worst figures in the country for the number of outpatients who had to hold out longer than the 18-week referral to treatment target.

More than a quarter (28%) – equivalent to 2,130 people – were not seen within that time period in March, compared with 21% in Fife and 19% nationally.

Defending NHS Scotland’s performance on a raft of waiting times measures, Ms Robison said the weather played a factor.

“This period covered a challenging winter for the NHS and severe weather in early March which caused disruption that took hospitals time to recover from,” she said.

Across the country, 55,167 people were not treated in time for the 18-week standard over the first three months of the year. In a separate target, for inpatient and day cases, 16,772 were not seen within the 12-week treatment time guarantee over the first quarter of this year.

And of those with suspected cancer, 17,139 were waiting longer than the sixweek standard, as of March this year, for at least one of eight diagnostic tests.

That amounts to 713 patients in Tayside and 371 in Fife, although both health boards fared better than Scotland as a whole.

Anas Sarwar, for Scottish Labour, said it was “insulting to NHS staff” to continue to point the finger at the beast from the east, which gripped Scotland for about a week.

“No one will buy Shona Robision’s attempts to hide behind a week of extreme weather to explain poor performance for three months,” he said.

Willie Rennie, the Scottish Liberal Democrat leader, called on First Minister Nicola Sturgeon to “personally issue an apology to the thousands of people in Tayside” who have been let down by delays.

There has been a cold response to Health Secretary Shona Robison’s defence of NHS Scotland’s waiting times.