A&E Performance At Queen Elizabeth University Hospital Falls To New Low
Performance against a key accident-and-emergency (A&E) waiting target has dropped to a new low at Scotland's flagship hospital.
Performance against a key accident-and-emergency (A&E) waiting target has dropped to a new low at Scotland's flagship hospital.
The emergency department at the £842 million Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow was the worst-performing in Scotland in the week ending January 10.
The latest figures show 75.9% of people were seen and either admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours at the site, well below the Scottish Government's interim target of 95%.
Glasgow Royal Infirmary was the second poorest performing department, with 76.3% of patients seen within time.
Last June, Health Secretary Shona Robison announced that a team of experts would be sent in to help staff improve A&E waiting times at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital.
Performance rose markedly as a result, before dipping again to 77.2% last October, a rate hospital director Anne Harkness described as ''disappointing''.
The hospital has largely stayed above the 90% mark in recent weeks and hit the target in one week of December with a rate of 95.3%.
Across Scotland, an average of 88.3% of patients were seen within the target time.
A total of 527 people (2.2%) spent more than eight hours in an emergency department while 85 patients (0.4%) waited more than 12 hours.
Ms Robison emphasised that A&E performance in one of the most demanding weeks of the year was nearly five percentage points better than last year.
She pointed out that despite being extremely busy'', NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde was up 6.6 percentage points on last year while NHS Borders and NHS Grampian had also made significant improvements.
Ms Robison said: This is a time of substantial increased pressure on our NHS.
We know from previous experience that these weeks are always the period when the performance of our A&E departments are affected most significantly.
This week's figures show just how much A&E performance can fluctuate, not only from week to week, but also from hospital to hospital, particularly at this time of year.
This first week of the year came after a four-day public holiday and we know that also impacts on performance the following week.
Our clear focus is now on supporting boards and hard-working staff to ease pressure across the system.''