1 in 5 patients miss NHS waiting time targets for treatment after referral

● Performance slumps to lowest point since targets introduced in 2011

Nearly one in five NHS patients are waiting longer than the target time for treatment after being referred by doctors, figures have revealed.

The Scottish Government set the ambition of having 90 per cent of patients beginning their treatment within 18 weeks of being referred, but new data showed performance has slumped to the lowest point since it was introduced in December 2011.

Other NHS figures showed a rise in people waiting for key diagnostic tests, while the number of patients waiting more than 12 weeks for inpatient or day case treatment has increased by almost 10,000 in two years.

The latest figures on patient referral to treatment time showed that in September, 81.4 per cent of patients started

0 There has been a rise in people waiting for key diagnostic tests getting help within the 18-week target, with 16,528 waiting longer than this.

Figures for July and August showed 83.2 per cent and 82.4 per cent started treatment within 18 weeks.

The figures do not include patients in the NHS Tayside area, as health board bosses there were unable to provide data because of reporting problems following the introduction of a new patient management system.

Of the 14 health boards who provided valid figures, only three met the 90 per cent referral-to-treatment target in September. In NHS Grampian, two-thirds of patients began treatment within 18 weeks of being referred – the worst performance in Scotland that month.

Separate figures showed that at the end of September, there were 77,819 patients in the NHS waiting for a key diagnostic test – an increase of 19.2 per cent from the year before.

Almost one in five had been waiting more than the sixweek target, with tests carried out within this time for 81.6 per cent of patients. That means the number of patients waiting more than this time almost doubled over the course of the year.

Conservative health spokesman Miles Briggs said: “With every week that passes, anoth- er set of statistics exposes the SNP’S shambolic running of our NHS. And while it may look bad on paper, it’s even worse for the patients and over-stretched medical staff who have to face the reality.

“It’s well known that the sooner someone starts treatment after being referred, the better their chances of recovery. Yet under this SNP government the referral-to-treatment waiting times have plummeted to their worst ever.”

Health Secretary Shona Robison said the Scottish Government is “committed to delivering the investment and reform necessary to ensure our NHS is fit for the changing needs of a 21st century Scotland”. Scotrail could be taken into public ownership by 2020, with a new report claiming the move could lead to average fare cuts of almost 7 per cent across the service.

A study produced for the TSSA union said if the rail service was nationalised “there is every reason to believe a publicly-run Scotrail could achieve a greater level of service than its predecessors”.

The document was produced by the Common Weal think-tank and published ahead of a meeting between TSSA general secretary Manuel Cortes and Transport Secretary Humza Yousaf.

Scottish rail passenger services have been run by train operating companies for the past two decades. The report said the operators of the Scotrail franchise had made “consistent annual operating profits of £10 million-£20m”.

Scotrail was described as being “one of the most highly subsidised franchises in the UK”. Abellio Scotrail received £293m in direct government funding in 2015-16.

Nationalising the service would allow operating profits to be reinvested to create a “fairer fares regime”, with the report suggesting this could “allow for a 6.5 per cent average fare cut”.