..beginning to affect the NHS and patients are being put at risk by dangerous delays. Crews are enduring long waits outside A&E in England because hospitals are struggling to deal with overcrowded wards.
..here spent almost two hours outside a hospital because there was no space in A&E. The Scottish Ambulance Service figures reflect wider pressures on the service with hospitals having few beds available for patients who need one.
In Scotland, bed occupancy in the most recent quarter, ending June 2023 was 87%. In the quarter ending December 2022 it was 89%.
In England, the comparable figures were 93% and 94%.
The Reporting Scotland claim is false.
As for beds numbers:
In Scotland, Bed numbers and percentage occupancy have been increasing in recent years. In 2022/23, the average number of available staffed beds for acute specialties was 13,695 – a 3% increase on last year (2021/22) and a 2% increase compared to five years ago (2017/18). The percentage occupancy for acute specialties rose from 84.4% in 2021/22 to 88.1% in 2022/23.
Sources:
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
James Cook grows increasingly desperate for a negative SG story that will stick, hence the Mis-Reporting Scotland piece and the “Ambulance pressures: ‘You can’t get to everybody'” article https://archive.ph/REk7p published 14th December 2023, 06:13 UTC penned by Lazy Winters.
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Read through your archived link above, my take away;
“Half the fleet waiting at the hospital.” 14 ambulances! Left you with the impression that the other half, 14, were left to pick up every other patient.
Half the fleet, really? Only 28 ambulances for the city of Edinburgh, no paramedics in fast response vehicles?
I pulled up the ambulance fleet numbers, for Edinburgh I lost the will at over 100. There are a couple of BMWs on the list. It could be that not all vehicles on the list are for ferrying patients, but the number is way way more than 28.
Click to access fleetlist0923.pdf
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Ah, but … aw thae figures yer gi’in us ur frae Public Health Scotland’s ain figures. Thur marking thur ain hamework.
Gi’e us figures frae reputable sources like the Daily Mail, or Professor Lindsay Paterson or Juan Kerr o the BBC.
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This was all to tie in with Starwar and Dross at FMQ’s today…..all unionists and
there media working in harmony to try to destabilise Scottish Government…..
Complicit shower of b******s!!!
This will panic people especially the elderly…..whether they phone for an ambulance
or worse die at home scared…..all unionist parties are a disgrace.
TIME TO ESCAPE THIS MADNESS….VOTE FOR INDEPENDENCE…….AND BE RID OF
THEM ALL!!!
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Bullsh*t Bluster Corporation
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Off topic.
Guardian live today.. £50billion in oil taxes to come in. But,but,but Scotland gets zilch except highest energy costs in UK. We need to be independent. Time to throw off the shackles of of being a colony.
“In response, Graham Stuart, the energy minister, said:
New licences simply allow us to mange the decline of a basin which is expected to fall at 7% a year, is expected to halve in a decade, and will see us growing independence on imports even with new licences, that is why we are doing it.
We are expecting £50bn in taxes from the oil and gas sector and without new licences to allow for the greening of the basin so we reduce emissions, we wouldn’t be able to ensure that each barrel of oil and production of gas comes with lower level of production emissions that we do today, and that is our mission.”
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Of course this is the oil and gas we were assured by all and sundry Brit Nats and their huckster, fraudster mejah from the BBC down to yellow page gutter press level—–
THAT THE OIL AND GAS WAS– 10 YEARS AGO– END OF LIFE AND COULD NOT POSSIBLY BE ANY KIND OF ASSET TO AN INDEPENDENT SCOTLAND.
INDEED, FROM THE TIME OF ITS DISCOVERY, IT NEVER WAS OR COULD BE AN ASSET.
THAT IT WOULD GIVE SCOTLAND AN OVERVALUED CURRENCY AND WAS ALWAYS ON THE VERGE OF RUNNING OUT.
IT WAS AND WOULD ALWAYS BE, A BURDEN FOR SCOTLAND.
Yup, that oil and gas.
Because the BBC in Scotland and all our colonial press could not see as far as far-a-way Norway.
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Total bullshit from Graham Stuart, the ‘continue to serve the needs of the corporates and treasury’ minister – Any remember North Sea oil running out, 2014 ?
Scotland has been taken to the cleaners over oil and gas, it’s beyond time to cut this London mafia and their satellites (HMS James Crook, Daily Wrecker, Scum, Herod, Hootsman, etc..) from our miserable lives, and begin to do what Scandinavians have been doing for over a century, making homes not landlords.
Graham Stuart is apparently well known as the member for Beverley and Holderclose, probably why he was separated from his wife in January 2022, yet still enjoys motorcycling, cycling and cricket, although probably not simultaneously https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Stuart_(politician)
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It’s been a busy day (14 December) for the BBC covering the latest insights into the performance of the NHS. The Corporation’s approach has been interesting to observe:
– the Radio 4 Today programme had a piece from the BBC’s own Nick Triggle on how much longer handovers from ambulances to A&E departments were taking in NHS England. He also told listeners – to provide helpful perspective as part of the BBC’s public service no doubt – that the same problems were present across the UK.
– ‘national’ news bulletins during the Today programme reported on the same topic but without reference to ‘across the UK’. However, it did so in customary fashion: (i) give a description of the ‘bad’ issue WITHOUT ANY indication of geographic scope; then (ii) introduce an England-only statistic, the thing that triggered having this item on the news in the first place; and then (iii) leave the audience with the implication that the England-only statistic has wider significance across the UK; but (iv) close with the positives of what is being done to alleviate the problem, but only refer to such positives in England. (This way of constructing news items that have their locus in England but with scope to imply that things are no better elsewhere in the UK is typical of the Today programme.)
– opting to make much of this ambulance item, the Today programme conducted an interview with a senior NHS England executive: at no point across the programme was the ambulance services ‘issue’ politicised – no Westminster government minister was ‘harmed’ – not even mentioned – in the reporting of this matter!
However, in amongst all this APOLITICAL coverage of failings within NHS England, the Today programme’s Nick Robinson interviewed Mark Drakeford in the context of the latter’s resignation as First Minister of Wales. It did not take the BBC interviewer long to challenge Mr Drakeford and his Labour government’s record on the poor performance of NHS Wales. The contrast in how the BBC chose to cover NHS matters in England and in Wales was stark.
The aforementioned Mr Triggle later in the day put an article on the BBC News website with this headline: ‘The hospitals struggling the most as winter bites‘. Despite a catalogue of matters regarding NHS England’s poor performance, including on ambulance handover times upon arrival at A&E departments, again there is ZERO politicisation in the article! A senior NHS England executive is afforded space to make positive remarks to balance the negative news.
Then we turn to the BBC in Scotland and the article on the BBC News website entitled ‘Ambulance pressures: ‘You can’t get to everybody’‘. Now that’s a pejorative headline for negatively framing a news story if ever I saw one! The lengthy article that follows continues in the same vein.
And in its report of FMQs from Holyrood today, BBC Scotland’s political correspondent Philip Sim writes: ‘… Douglas Ross had come up with some fairly indefensible examples – like one patient waiting for 15 hours outside a hospital. In terms of the broader debate, Mr Ross was also on familiar territory – criticising the state of services, and saying that is the fault of the party which has been in government since 2007.’
The irony of that latter statement may have been lost on this BBC journalist, unaccustomed as he and his BBC Scotland colleagues are to providing context or perspective!
Mr Ross no doubt feels able to make such remarks – even as someone whose party has long been the government (with ALL resources at its disposal) responsible for the poorly performing NHS England – because he is confident that the BBC’s Mr Sim and his ilk WILL NOT PROVIDE THE CONTEXT OR PERSPECTIVE that would make the ludicrous and hypocritical position of Mr Ross all too apparent!
On the day negative news on ambulance services emerges in England, BBC Scotland majors on ambulance services in Scotland and the Tory leader in Scotland majors on ambulance services at FMQs. Is this not an amazing coincidence?
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Oh dear, James Cook seems to have taken an AJ flounce with TWO articles on the BBC/Scotland web-page and comments open as cover to retiring the Lazy Winters “Ambulance pressures: ‘You can’t get to everybody’” farce –
“Police Scotland says 29 stations at risk of closure to plug budget gap”, published 18 minutes ago yet 14th December 2023, 05:36 UTC, earliest comment by Nicolex Sturmond at 14.38 with 63 upticks being negative as contracted, 233 comments at the time of writing…
“Scotland’s National Care Service delayed by three years”, published 1 hour ago yet 14th December 2023, 04:56 UTC, earliest comment by WindyM who was wholly positive having somehow slipped in quick at 14.21 with 3 upticks before dial-a-mob got on-line to boost comments to 90 by the time of writing……
The skews where you are from HMS James Cook…
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Before leaving the BBC’s day of NHS coverage behind, its News website article entitled ‘The hospitals struggling the most as winter bites‘ reports this:
‘Alongside the data on handover times, figures released on Thursday showed: 30% of patients waited longer than the target time of four hours in A&E in November.’ So, 70% of attendances met the 4-hour standard – wow, is that the best in the UK?
Well no, the BBC is ‘AT IT’ again! This is what the just published NHS England report actually reveals about A&E waiting times in November, 2023:
* 55.4% of patients were seen within 4 hours in type 1 A&E departments compared to 55.9% in October 2023 and 54.5% in November 2022 – this is THE KEY METRIC used by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) and others when discussing A&E waits and also when making comparative assessments between the NHS in different parts of the UK
* for context, attendances at type 1 A&E departments in England were 0.7% lower in November 2023 when compared with November 2022.
Source https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/ae-waiting-times-and-activity/ae-attendances-and-emergency-admissions-2023-24/
For perspective, in NHS Scotland’s ‘main’ emergency departments (regarded by the RCEM and others as the equivalents of England’s Type 1 departments), the weekly data releases for November 2023 reveal that THE 4-HOUR STANDARD WAS ACHIEVED WITH BETWEEN 60.8% AND 65.1% OF ATTENDANCES. (See the NHS Performs website.)
Even Scotland’s 60.8% is substantially better than England’s 55.4% but the BBC sees no relevance in this comparison! Voters in Scotland would have no interest in learning this from the BBC would they? But the BBC does regard information that problems with ambulance waits are just as bad across the UK as in England is relevant to broadcast (see my earlier btl post)?
The aforementioned BBC News website article omitted to mention this for NHS England:
* Of all the total attendances (at Type 1 and Type 2 departments) in November 2023, 145,000 waited more than 12 hours from arrival at A&E i.e. 10.9% of attendances.
The weekly performance data for NHS Scotland reveal that DURING NOVEMBER BETWEEN 5.0% AND 6.7% OF PATIENTS ATTENDING THE ‘MAIN’ EMERGENCY DEPARTMENTS SPENT 12 HOURS OR MORE THERE.
Even Scotland’s 6.7% is substantially better than England’s 10.9% but the BBC sees no relevance in this comparison! Voters in Scotland would have no interest in learning this from the BBC would they? But the BBC regards information that problems with ambulance waits are just as bad across the UK as in England is relevant to broadcast (see my earlier btl post)?
In a busy day for the BBC on NHS matters there has been ZERO politicisation of poor performance in NHS England, no Westminster government involvement whatsoever as far as I can find. By contrast, I’ve just heard a UK evening news bulletin on Radio 4. It had a couple of sentences – without context, without perspective – covering Scotland’s Deputy FM ‘apologising’ for NHS Scotland’s ambulance services.
And where is HM’s Official Opposition in Westminster in all this? Silent it seems. Might this be because it’s vulnerable to Tory taunts about the performance of the NHS in Labour-governed Wales? BBC viewers/listeners/readers may never know!
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BBC Scotland needs to, with the help of Ross and Sarwar in FM ?s, stem off any chance of a complacent, feel good whitabootery, when we hear that the English NHS is in a bad way. Way worse than our NHS. Hell’s teeth, more of them might start thinking (realising) that the SG are doing a good job.
Probably just a coincidence that a damming NHS story erupts in England, Ross and Sarwar ask NHS questions in Holyrood and BBC Scotland plumbs their oft visited well of negativity. Aye right.
And done with total disregard to the mental health of the Scottish population.
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