By Professor John Robertson OBA

From Accident and Emergency wait times across the UK: 2024 A summary of the cross-UK comparability of Accident and Emergency wait time statistics from January 2013 to September 2023, the above graph.

Imagine this was different and NHS Scotland had consistently performed less well than NHS England or Wales? You don’t need me to tell you. It would be just like the ‘Scotland’s drug deaths, the worst in..’ narrative.

Also, there are reasons to doubt the NHS England data after decades of managerialism there, more concerned with image than actual performance, after decades of Con and New Labour governments.

See for example this from 2021:

The Royal College of Emergency Medicine, in its call for a ‘Summer to Recover‘ campaign, outlines a series of recommendations to ensure that Emergency Departments do not become the system failure service this winter.

The above, from 4 key requests, will strike a chord with TuS regulars. For more than a year now, I’ve been reporting on NHS Scotland’s superior A&E performance and noting that the gap is almost certainly even greater because NHS England fiddles its data.

For any who have missed this, the gap is probably even greater because.

1. BBC Scotland has accused NHS England of fiddling the figures by selection which departments are included: https://fullfact.org/health/fiddled-accident-emergency-statistics/
2. NHS England starts the clock again after patients are admitted while NHS Scotland counts from arrival in A&E: https://inews.co.uk/news/health/nhs-england-covering-up-true-scale-of-12-hour-hospital-waits-1335856