Tories warn of 'winter storm' in Scotland's A&E departments
The percentage of patients seen within the Scottish Government's four hour target time hit a record low earlier this month
Last updated 19th Jul 2022
The Scottish Conservatives are warning of a "winter storm" in Scotland's NHS if standards do not improve in the next few months.
The message comes as the latest Accident and Emergency waiting time figures show 66.8% of patients were seen within four hours in the week to July 10.
The Scottish Government's target is 95.
Warning comes after worst A&E waiting times on record
Those numbers were a slight improvement on the previous week when under 65% of people waiting in A&E were seen within the target time, the worst performance on record.
Analysis carried out by the Tories suggests that A&E performances against the four-hour target time are usually worse during winter months than they are in the summer.
On average, the party says, performance in emergency departments has been down by more than five percentage points compared to the summer.
This gap widened to nine points in 2017 and 2020, it said.
Dr Sandesh Gulhane, health spokesman for the Scottish Conservatives, has now suggested the Scottish Government's NHS Recovery Plan needs to be "urgently rewritten" before the winter months roll in.
"Flimsy" NHS Recovery Plan "isn't cutting it"
He told Clyde 1 News: “Waiting times in A&E hit another record high on Humza Yousaf’s watch last week, yet the worst may yet be to come for suffering patients and heroic frontline staff.
“Staff who are already beyond breaking point will likely face a winter storm later this year. The health secretary and the SNP should be fully focussed on getting a grip on the crisis engulfing our NHS.
“Humza Yousaf needs to accept that his flimsy NHS recovery plan produced last year isn’t cutting it, and that a new recovery plan must support staff at every turn to improve standards before the winter period hits.”
Scottish A&E performance "best in UK"
But a Scottish Government spokesman said A&Es north of the border were the "best performing" in the UK and had been "outperforming those in England, Wales and Northern Ireland for over six years".
"NHS planning for winter is under way across the service. Building upon lessons identified from 2021-22, we are developing a cross-cutting programme of winter readiness to strengthen service resilience and enhance national contingency planning to support our NHS boards," the spokesman said.
"We are also working with boards to ensure a range of measures outlined in our new £50 million Urgent and Unscheduled Care Collaborative programme, to reduce A&E waiting times and improve patient experience, are implemented by winter."