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Weekly waiting times published.

Performance in Scotland’s core emergency departments remained relatively stable for the week ending June 14, with 92.2 per cent of people seen and subsequently admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours.

This is slightly down on last week’s figure of 92.6 per cent but is an increase of more than six percentage points since weekly reporting began in February.

The Scottish Government remains committed to supporting health boards experiencing challenges within A&E. Last week NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde recognised that not enough people were being seen within four hours at the South Glasgow University Hospital and discussed and agreed additional support with the Scottish Government.

The additional support began last week, with the team focusing on enhancing bed management and discharge planning to improve patient experience and reduce delays in leaving hospital.

Yesterday’s figures are for the week ending June 14 - before the additional support began to work on site. In that period, 78.6 per cent of people were treated within four hours at the South Glasgow University Hospital.

However, in a board paper released earlier on yesterday, the health board has reported that performance at the hospital has improved significantly since Monday, June 15, with 89.6 per cent of people now being seen within 4 hours over that most recent period, up to June 21.

Commenting, Health Secretary Shona Robison said yesterday:

“As we have seen over the past few weeks, weekly performance will fluctuate. However it is crucial that, with on-going support from the Scottish Government, health boards continue to make sustainable progress towards meeting our world leading targets.

“Last week NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde recognised that not enough people were being seen within four hours at the South Glasgow University Hospital and discussed and agreed additional support with the Scottish Government.

“The transfer to the new £842 million hospital, bringing hundreds of staff together in a new building, was a massive task and there was always likely to be challenges in performance. Nonetheless, it is only right that we also recognise the successes, which saw planned and scheduled services continue to operate well throughout the migration period.

“While long waits in A&E continue to reduce, the additional support is helping embed new systems and processes as staff from the three separate hospitals come together on the new site.

“We are in regular contact with the health board to monitor performance, and its update to board members today suggests a considerable improvement over recent days. This is encouraging, and reflects the fact that staff at the SGUH are working extremely hard to adapt to the new building, and new systems and that the expert support in place is assisting their efforts. While this will be reflected in next week’s statistics, simply improving is not enough. We now need to work together to get the SGUH up to meeting our rigorous A&E targets on a sustainable basis.

“I recently visited the hospital and was impressed with the enthusiasm and dedication of all the staff there, and in particular their commitment to working together to deliver the best possible outcomes for patients in the Greater Glasgow and Clyde area.

“There is still much work to do, but we have put record funding and staffing in place and we are committed to tackling delayed discharge, including through the integration of health and social care. That means we have the strong foundations in place to ensure our NHS continues to deliver, quick, high quality care for the people of Scotland.”

Notes To Editors

Background

The publication of weekly A&E waiting time statistics for the week ending June 14, covers the 30 emergency departments in Scotland which provide a 24 hour emergency medicine consultant led service.

The statistics relate to patients who were seen and subsequently admitted, transferred or discharged within 4, 8 and 12 hours.

The latest Weekly Statistical Publication is available on the ISD Scotland website: http://www.isdscotland.org/

The statistics included in the Weekly Publication are also published on ISD’s NHS Performs website: http://www.isdscotland.scot.nhs.uk/Products-and-Services/NHS-Performs/

The updated performance figure for Glasgow is based on board papers published by Greater Glasgow and Clyde Health Board yesterday and covers the period from Monday 15th June onwards. 

http://www.nhsggc.org.uk/about-us/nhs-board/board-meetings-and-papers/papers/2015/