One reason for SNP support? Scotland’s A&E departments massive 18% better than NHS England in November

(Image: SWNS Group)

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%

https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Emergency-Care/Publications/2019-12-03/Summary-Weekly/index.asp

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.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/dec/13/nhs-england-on-its-knees-as-performance-figures-hit-new-lows

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:

You are MORE THAN TWICE as likely to spend more than 12 hours waiting in A&E in NHS England than in NHS Scotland

3 thoughts on “One reason for SNP support? Scotland’s A&E departments massive 18% better than NHS England in November

  1. 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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