NHS Scotland’s A&E departments see around 300 000 patients in a year. Around 5% wait more than 12 hours because after triage they have been found to be not at serious risk.
A Scottish Cons freedom of information request found one person who waited 84 hours, nine months ago. We are not given the full details. There are beds in A&E. Did they wait in one of those as seems likely. Did the medics try to send them home but they refused to go?
The Cons also found ‘others who were not treated for 79, 64 and 53 hours‘ so that’s another 3 from the more than 300 000?
So, over a year, four people out of more than 300 000, waited a very long time? 0.001%
Talking-up Scotland / Scottish media fact checking is like shooting fish in a barrel 
Aye, and quite predictably plonked in prime promotion spot by HMS James Cook on both the Scotland and Scotland/Politics pages, the former only being being knocked back to second place for “Live” following Kwasi Kwarteng’s Westminster appearance.
You’d never guess that pretty awful figures for England’s A&E are expected would you ? 🙄
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Apparently NHS England may be told by Therese Coffey to stop reporting the A&E figures.
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It would surprise nobody
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There was a Tweet I saw this morning from someone who thinks the 84-hr wait case was his mother. From what he said in the Tweet the circumstances surrounding the case were quite different to the impression given by DRoss or whichever one of the interchangeable wastes of space brought it up.
On the subject of A&E waiting times it cannot be disguised, and should not be glossed over, that the A&E waiting times in NHS Scotland have been on a downward trend for some time and this has been made worse by the number of attendances at A&E returning to their pre-Covid levels. The reasons for this are one way or another Covid related.
Firstly, the obvious one, staff absences due to Covid. This may be absences in A&E itself but absences in other parts of the hospital may impact on the time taken to process patients. For example, ward closures due to Covid, X-Ray Depts shortstaffed & Labs causing hold ups in getting test results etc.
Secondly, Covid and especially the publicity overspill from England about the difficulty of seeing your GP may have resulted in a change in the nature of the patients presenting at A&E which changes what has to be done to process patients. There may be a research project in there for someone to find out if there was a material change in the type of patient presenting at A&E and the illnesses they presented with and whether this resulted in longer waits in A&E.
Thirdly, the numbers being admitted from A&E into hospitals already struggling because of delayed discharges and staff absences. Around one quarter of all patients attending A&E each month are admitted to hospital. Weekly attendances are around 25k- 27k so around 6k-7k will be admitted. We know there are problems with staffing etc in care homes and getting carers for Care in the Community all of which feeds back to create a bottleneck in hospitals with bed blocking. Again Covid & staff absences affect every stage of this process.
So what to do?. Well perhaps create a safer Environment in hospitals and care homes for staff and patients would be a useful 1st step. Ventilation, air filtration and CO2 monitoring in every part of buildings and FFP2 masks as standard would reduce transmission and hence staff absences.
I am sure people can come up with some more ideas to add to this.
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DRossie to Mothership.
“Mothership, we have a problem”.
Sigh. “What is it this time DRossie? Dont you know how busy we are in London, giving bungs to the rich”?
“Mothership, all my aides are leaving because……well, because of Trussie being elevated to the Big Chair”.
“This is just nonsense, DRossie. Hire someone with experience to help you out”.
DRossie to Mothership.
“Mothership, I did what you said, and hired someone really, really good. A Super-spad who worked with Spud Murphy………..but he LIED, Mummy. He told me porkies and he isn’t even Boris. I had to get rid of him and everyone is laughing at me”!
“DRossie. Listen to me and listen with ALL your little brain.
You NEED a person who lies.
A person who can tell porkies with a straight face.
Someone who will lie for Old Blighty.
For Trussie.
For England.
Now this is your LAST chance DRossie. Remember what happened to Jackdaw Carlot—this is only a sniff of what YOUR fate will be, if you contact London again”!
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Dross’s fevered imagination getting away with him, there is no way in hell ANY patients were stood inside or outside A&E waiting 84, 79, 64 or 53 hours, yet that is what he and the BBC in Scotland would have you believe – archive of the article https://archive.ph/rATD9
I read with particular incredulity the BMA’s Dr Lailah Peel assertion “Week after week this government has been breaking records for the worst A&E waiting times ever”
– Not hospital or health board management but “this government”, that’s political gaming not fact
– Ignoring the “Week after week” nonsense which is also political gaming and provably false, I was amused by the “worst A&E waiting times ever” – the BBC had helpfully published a chart headed “A&E records since records began, 01/01/2016 – Given that Dr Lailah Peel only graduated medical college 4 years ago then moved to Scotland to take up a junior doctor position, the beginning of time for her was ca 2018, hence her definition of “ever” extends back a max of 2 years to when records were first published, letting Sarwar off the hook for the previous 16 years of Labour misrule.
I dread to to think what Scotland’s NHS staff ‘s morale is like after years of HMS James Cook, criticism then Covid (which only Anas thinks has gone away) then a cost of living and energy crisis few of the current generation have experienced (Truss me it is outwith our hands), only to have anas and anotherass and a political activist and a propaganda outfit insist it is scotland’s political choices which have brought disaster upon it and FFS don’t mention England.
Were I a scottish junior doctor rather than engineer, I’d be asking very blunt if not rude questions of Lailah Peel.
As for members asking blunt questions of Sarwar of Ross, they are already abandoned even if the BBC don’t broadcast it.
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