SNP under fire for ‘hat-trick of failures’ on latest NHS waiting times

The latest round of NHS waiting time figures showed almost 20,000 patients failed to get hospital treatment within the legally guaranteed target time.

In the three months to the end of June, 19,604 people waited more than 12 weeks for inpatient or day case treatment – breaching the government’s treatment time guarantee.

Opposition parties seized on the latest target failures, with the Tories accusing the Scottish Government of presiding over a “hat-trick of failures”. Other figures showed the Scottish Government’s target of treating at least 90 per cent of patients within 18 weeks of their referral continued to be missed. This standard was achieved for fewer than three quarters (79.2 per cent) in June.

Across Scotland, only four NHS boards – NHS Borders, the Golden Jubilee National Hospital, NHS Orkney and NHS Western Isles – met the referral to treatment standard, with 11 areas failing to achieve it.

Labour said the treatment time guarantee had been broken more than 100,000 times under health secretary Jeane Freeman, with public health spokesman David Stewart insisting the legally binding target was not worth the paper it was written on. Ms Freeman launched an £850 million action plan to reduce hospital waiting times in October last year – but Scottish Conservative health spokesman Miles Briggs said the health service was still not hitting targets.

“This hat-trick of failures by the SNP is leaving patients in the lurch,” he said. “The nationalists aren’t even close to hitting these targets and are lazily hoping hardworking staff will continue to pick up the pieces. The SNP’S continued negligence – spectacularly missing these targets – is running the NHS into the ground and is becoming increasingly unacceptable. Frankly, it is running out of excuses.”

The government also set the target of key diagnostic tests for patients being carried out within six weeks, with figures showing at the end of June this year that 81.6 per cent of patients had been waiting for less than this, down from 84 per cent at the end of March.

A Scottish Government spokesman said: “We recognise patients are waiting too long for outpatient appointments, as well as inpatient and day case procedures. That is why we have invested more than £100m this year from our £850m Waiting Times Improvement plan. We have been clear with health boards it is unacceptable for anyone to wait too long for treatment.”