Waiting times improve at A&E units amid winter pressures
Performance at Scotland’s accident and emergency units has shown improvement after winter pressures including the flu outbreak led to the two worst weeks on record.
Despite flu rates in Scotland being almost five times higher than they were a year ago, new figures showed A&E staff across the country admitted, transferred or discharged 85.8 per cent of all patients within the four hour target.
That is well below the Scottish Government target of having 95 per cent of patients dealt with, but is up from the previous week, when the fourhour standard was achieved for less than four of out five (77.9 per cent) of patients the worst performance since records began in 2015.
Health Secretary Shona Robison described the improved waiting times performance as a “really significant achievement”.
In the first week of January 2018, a total 470 people had to spend more than 12 hours in A&E. New figures for the week ending January 14 showed this had dropped to 118, while 552 patients waited over eight hours, down from 1,449 in the previous week.
Emergency department staff dealt with 22,883 cases over the course of the week – a drop from the 25,280 patients who needed treatment in the first seven days of the year.
Ms Robison said: “Our A&E departmentsarecontinuingto be impacted by the pressures and demand of winter, so these improving statistics are a really significant achievement.
“Flu rates in Scotland are currently almost five times higher than the same period last year and hospitals are reporting a high number of people with already-significant care needs contracting flu, which is increasing demand even further. We still have a few months of winter left and there’s no doubt we’ve still got some challengregistered ing weeks ahead, particularly with the bad weather we’re experiencing, but I’d like to say thank you once again to health staff right across Scotland.”
The latest Health Protection statistics, covering the same period as the A&E figures, said the rate was 114 people per 100,000 reporting a flu-like illness in the week to 14 January. Health experts believe the flu rate peaked around this time.
Shadow health secretary, Miles Briggs, said: “Although the slight improvement is welcome, there are still hospitals where one in five patients are waiting more than four hours.”