Slight Rise In A&E Waiting Figures

Waiting times in accident and emergency (A&E) departments have improved slightly, according to the latest weekly figures.

In the week ending Sunday April 12, Scotland's 32 emergency departments dealt with 26,356 patients.

A total of 91.5% were seen, treated and either discharged or admitted within the target time of four hours, a slight increase from 91% in the previous week.

Of those, 201 patients (0.8%) spent more than eight hours in A&E while 30 patients (0.1%) had a wait of more than 12 hours.

The Scottish Government has set an interim goal of treating 95% of people in four hours, in advance of meeting the full target of 98%.

Health Secretary Shona Robison highlighted an improvement of 5.4 percentage points since weekly reporting of performance began on February 22.

She said: Staff in Scotland's NHS are continuing to do a fantastic job to treat people as quickly as possible and I would like to thank them for this.

The NHS is working hard to ensure that patients are not waiting long periods in A&E, with emergency departments seeing more than nine out of 10 people within four hours. More hospitals this week saw performance reach 98% and this is encouraging.

While we are seeing early signs of recovery from the pressures we have witnessed over winter, we absolutely recognise there is still much to do to ensure sustainability and to ensure NHS boards are in an optimum position heading into next winter.''