Scots waiting more than 12 hours in A&E 99 times worse than 2011
Nearly 80,000 people waited more than 12 hours in emergency departments last year
The Scottish Government is being warned A&E departments are in crisis, as figures reveal the number of Scots waiting more than 12 hours.
The Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) has found the numbers are 99 times worse than in 2011, when just 784 people waited more than 12 hours in emergency department.
That number has surged to 76,346 in the last year, according to the RCEM’s findings.
More than three times as many people waited over 12 hours in Scotland's A&E service last year alone than in the full decade up to 2020, the figures show.
"Unacceptable" and "dangerous"
RCEM's vice chair Dr Fiona Hunter told Greatest Hits Radio: “For patients in emergency departments, what we need is further hospital beds within the system in Scotland, to allow better flow, and a real focus on delayed discharges which we know are far too high”.
She continued: “Hospital beds are often full, and the pressure cooker of the system is the emergency department, where these patient end up languishing in surge areas in a corridor outside the main department, or being in an ambulance stacked outside the emergency department”.
The RCEM said one in every 18 patients who entered through the doors of an A&E in 2024 waited more than a dozen hours.
It said high waits were "unacceptable" and "dangerous" and told ministers that tackling them must be a priority.
"The pressure cooker of the system is the emergency department"
The statistics, based on figures from Public Health Scotland (PHS), show wait times had begun to increase in 2016, when 1,005 people experienced waits over a dozen hours in A&E, before exploding during the Covid pandemic.
They also show that December was the second worst since records began in 2011 for patients experiencing four, eight, and 12-hour wait times.
The RCEM said the wait times could be due to the lack of in-patient beds and an inability to discharge people well enough to go home, called delayed discharge, which is often due to a lack of social care support.
In December 2024, there were 61,706 days spent in hospital by people who did not medically need to be there - a 6% increase compared to the same month in 2023.
Twelve hours in A&E used to be a "never event"
Dr Hunter added: “A patient who has to wait 12 hours in an emergency department used to be what we called a ‘never event’, something that was looked into as an exception, and from these figures you can see that this has now become the norm.
“These patients, we know, are at greater risk of coming to harm.”
PHS's own data found slightly higher numbers of A&E waits compared to the analysis by the RCEM, which used the data published by PHS at the time of release.
While the RCEM found 76,346 Scots waited more than a dozen hours in A&E in 2024, PHS's data put this number at 77,563.
Nearly 80,000 Scots waiting more than 12 hours
The public body said the discrepancy could be due to a recent change in definitions for A&E stats, which appears to have impacted statistics retroactively.
A spokesperson said: "PHS is speaking to RCEM about differences in numbers."
They added: "Slight differences remain in RCEM archive figures compared to PHS figures for 2020 onwards, which we believe are likely to relate to changes to definitions used for our A&E statistics, to align with the revised 4-hour standard.
"PHS has now received a copy of the RCEM archive numbers and will investigate further to confirm.
"Continued to face significant pressure"
"The PHS publication states that changes to definitions have been backdated in our statistics, and we published a paper in advance outlining impacts on performance."
First Minister John Swinney announced a plan last week to tackle pressures facing the NHS, including 150,000 additional appointments and procedures each year.
Health Secretary Neil Gray said: "Our A&E departments have continued to face significant pressure, but this is not confined to Scotland.
"The Scottish Government is determined to drive improvements, reduce waiting lists and tackle delayed discharge, all of which will improve the flow of patients through hospital and ease pressures on A&E.
"I met with the RCEM earlier this week and took the opportunity to listen and provide updates on the action we are taking to support improvements and reduce delays for patients.
"If passed by Parliament, our Budget will provide an additional £200 million to help backlogs, improve capacity and remove blockages that keep patients in hospital longer than necessary, ensuring we can deliver the best possible service for patients."
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