Thousands wait for 8 hours at A&E

More than 3,000 people waited over eight hours to be dealt with at accident-and-emergency departments in Scotland in a month, figures show.

A Scottish Government target of admitting, transferring or discharging 95 per cent of patients within four hours continued to be missed in January. A total of 87.2 per cent of the 129,053 people attending A&E were dealt within the time limit that month, latest official figures show.

Of these, 3,170 (2.6 per cent) waited for more than eight hours and 969 (0.8 per cent) waited more than 12 hours.

The performance against the waiting-time target was up on 85.1 per cent the previous month but down on the 91.1 per cent recorded in January 2017. Weekly figures show 87.5 per cent of people attending emergencydepartmentsinscotland were dealt with within four hours in the week ending February 25, worse than the 89.1 per cent the previous week.