NHS in Scotland in 'crisis' as patients left waiting in A&E for more than 12 hours '99 times higher'

dailyrecord.co.uk:

The number of Scots waiting more than 12 hours in an A&E ward is 99 times higher than in 2011, a shock report has found.Analysis by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) was last night seized on by opposition parties who claimed the SNP Government had "failed patients and staff across Scotland".Jackie Baillie, Scottish Labour health spokeswoman, said: "This damning analysis lays bare the disastrous scale of the crisis in our NHS.

The SNP’s dangerous incompetence is putting lives at risk and letting down hardworking NHS staff."The report found just 784 people waited more than 12 hours in A&E wards in 2011 - but by last year this number had surged to 76,346.

More than three times as many people waited over 12 hours last year alone than in the full decade up to 2020, the figures show.The RCEM said one in every 18 patients who entered through the doors of an A&E in 2024 waited more than a dozen hours.

It said high waits were “unacceptable” and “dangerous” and told ministers that tackling them must be a priority.The figures from Public Health Scotland show wait times had begun to increase in 2016 before exploding during the Covid pandemic.Dr John-Paul Loughrey, RCEM vice president for Scotland, said: “When you look at the data over the past 14 years the reality of the number of people now facing extremely long waits in this country is shockingly clear.“The figure from 2011 shows just a few hundred people waited 12 hours or longer.