New figures released by ISD Scotland show that the A&E waiting time target has been missed every month from April 2017 -; April 2018 in NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde.

The SNP government has an interim target of 95 per cent of patients admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours of arriving at A&E. The figures for April show that just 88.1% of patients in Greater Glasgow and Clyde were seen within this target time. Figures for the last year show that the percentage of patients seen within this time across the NHS area have never met the target and has reached 94% just once.

In April, 407 patients waited longer than 8 hours in hospitals across Glasgow and 25 patients waited longer than 12 hours.

NHS staff are overworked and under-resourced and need better support from the Scottish Government to deliver against challenging targets.

Jackie said:

 “Too many patients in Greater Glasgow and Clyde are waiting far too long for treatment at A&E. The SNP government have set targets for NHS treatment times that hospitals are struggling to meet for months on end. This is not fair on hard pressed staff and it’s not fair on patients.

“For one whole year, patients from our area have been routinely waiting longer than 4 hours at A&E departments. If this is not a wakeup call for this health secretary, then I’m not sure what will be. It’s time she got her brief under control, or stepped aside