
The November 2019 summary for NHS Scotland A&E is not yet published but you can see the weekly figures:
Week-ending Seen within 4 hours
3rd November 85.5%
10th 84.6%
17th 85.1%
24th 83.8%
1st December 81.2%
Average 84.04%
From the Guardian , extrapolated from the NHS England report which sneakily tries to hide the truth of their Type 1 department (comparable with NHS Scotland) performance amongst the data for the small non-emergency activities in hospitals with no full A&E departments:
71% of patients who attended a hospital-based A&E unit in November were seen and discharged, admitted or transferred within four hours – a record low.
Click to access Combined-Performance-Summary-December-October-November-data-2019-43ui4.pdf
So, the difference is 13% but 13 is 18.3% of 71 so 84 is 18% better than 71. I’m using Reporting Scotland editorial guidelines on arithmetic written by Jamie McIvor.
Remember also:

Those guidelines on percentages are wrong! I couldn’t find the original source so can’t check the context.. but the difference in percentages (13%) is a better number to use. The only time you would use the proportional increase (18%) is if you were comparing changes in the same thing – i.e. the same health service increasing numbers seen from 71% to 84% between to different time periods.. then an 18% increase makes sense. It’s not good to be producing misleading statistics like this: it detracts from the underlying message and leaves it open to straw man attacks etc by adversaries.
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Wrong is a relative concept. I’m parodying the MSM approach. Maybe you’re right about the straw man thing though. I’ll think about it.
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Spoke to a police statistician who agreed that my use was acceptable.
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