A NATIONAL EMERGENCY

Raft of Scottish Government failures has seen waiting times hit alarming levels, planned ops axed & doctors to strike

- VIVIENNE AITKEN

THE NHS celebrates its 75th birthday today in crisis amid a raft of failures as the Scottish Government is warned “alarm bells should be ringing”.

The latest statistics on A&E waiting times, delayed discharges and cancelled planned operations show they are all in a state of chaos.

Recent figures show cancer waiting times at their worst ever level while one in seven Scots are on an NHS waiting list of some kind as treatment time guarantee figures take a downward spiral.

Meanwhile, Scotland’s junior doctors are gearing up for strike action which could plunge the health service into even more chaos.

The UK Government has announced billions of pounds of investment into providing more doctors and nurses in England and

Wales to mark the NHS 75th anniversary this week. But the Scottish Government has been accused of failing to tackle major problems.

Waiting times for patients in A&E currently show more than three patients in every 10 are waiting more than the target of four hours at emergency departments.

The figures released for the month of May showed 11,201 patients waited more than eight hours and 3716 were still waiting after 12 hours in A&E, although the numbers seen in time were the highest monthly figure for a year at 70.8 per cent.

The most recent statistic for the week ending June 18 shows a dip again to just 68.9 per cent.

The figure has not been above 80 per cent since summer 2021 and the actual target of 95 per cent has only been met a handful of times – during the first pandemic lockdown when people stayed away from A&Es in their droves – since July 2017.