Warning over 'unacceptable' A&E waiting times

The Scottish government has been urged to take immediate action to address "unacceptable" and "dangerous" A&E waiting times by an industry body.

The Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) said the number of patients waiting for more than 12 hours in A&E is 99 times higher than it was 14 years ago.

The statistics, based on figures from Public Health Scotland (PHS), show 76,346 patients waited over 12 hours in A&E in 2024, compared with 784 in 2011.

The Scottish government said it was determined to drive improvement and has met with the RCEM to discuss its concerns.

RCEM analysis of the figures suggests three times as many people waited over 12 hours in Scottish accident and emergency departments in 2024 than in the full decade up to 2020.

The body, which sets and monitors standards in A&E departments, said one in every 18 patients who entered emergency rooms last year waited more than 12 hours.

Dr John-Paul Loughrey, the RCEM's 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.

"It is unacceptable, and it is dangerous - and many of those patients will be stuck on trolleys receiving so called 'corridor care' - because we just don't have enough in-patient beds."

Dr Loughrey said although Scotland's performance was the best in the UK, being the "least worst" was not something to be commended.

He added: "Lives are being put at risk by these long waits and ending them must be a political priority."

Fellow vice-president Dr Jason Long told BBC Scotland News there needed to be a "whole system approach" to fixing the problems.

He added: "It's not simply to have bigger emergency departments or lots more staff - from start to finish we need to look at, access to hospital beds, increasing the number of carers and increasing the number of nursing home spaces.

"That's not an overnight thing. This isn't something that can be fixed within an emergency department, this is something that needs whole system change."

Figures from PHS show wait times had begun to increase in 2016, when 1,005 experienced waits of more than 12 hours in A&E, before increasing dramatically during the Covid pandemic.

They also show that December last year was the second worst month since 2011 - when the RCEM started to collect monthly data - for patients experiencing four, eight, and 12-hour wait times.

The RCEM said wait times could be due to a lack of inpatient beds and delayed discharge, often due to a lack of social care support.

In December, there were 61,706 days spent in hospital beds by people who did not medically need to be there - a 6% increase compared to the same month in 2023, said the RCEM.

The RCEM found 76,346 patients in Scotland waited more than a dozen hours in A&E in 2024, while PHS's data put this number slightly higher - at 77,563.

The discrepancy could be down to the RCEM making its calculations at the time the PHS data was first released. It has since been revised due to a change in definitions surrounding A&E waiting times.

A spokesperson for the public health body said: "Slight differences remain in RCEM archive figures compared to PHS figures for 2020 onwards, which we believe are likely to relate to changes to definitions used for our A&E statistics, to align with the revised four-hour standard.

"PHS has now received a copy of the RCEM archive numbers and will investigate further to confirm."

First Minister John Swinney has pledged to put Scotland's NHS on a "path of modernisation and renewal" and tackle high waiting times and delayed discharge.

Swinney also announced plans to deliver an extra 150,000 appointments and procedures over the coming year.

Health Secretary Neil Gray said: "Our A&E departments have continued to face significant pressure but this is not confined to Scotland.

"The Scottish government is determined to drive improvements, reduce waiting lists and tackle delayed discharge, all of which will improve the flow of patients through hospital and ease pressures on A&E.

"I met with the RCEM earlier this week and took the opportunity to listen and provide updates on the action we are taking to support improvements and reduce delays for patients."

Gray added that the budget, if passed by parliament, would provide an additional £200m to help backlogs, improve capacity and remove blockages that keep patients in hospital longer than necessary.

The health secretary said the current problems were due to there being "pressure on all parts of the system".

He said that while the government would "embrace innovation", health services would remain "free at the point of need."

Scottish Labour health spokeswoman Jackie Baillie said: "This damning analysis lays bare the disastrous scale of the crisis in our NHS under the SNP.

"Despite plenty of warm words and empty promises, successive SNP health secretaries and first ministers have failed to get to grips with this crisis."

Scottish Conservative health spokesman Dr Sandesh Gulhane accused the SNP of allowing Scotland's NHS to "fall into a state of permanent crisis" with "no cure to fix it".

He added: "It is bad enough that a third of patients are routinely not seen within the SNP's four-hour target time, but it is downright dangerous that tens of thousands waited over half a day last year to be seen."

And Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton said the SNP had "failed patients and staff across Scotland".

"Despite NHS staff warning of these conditions for years, SNP governments have repeatedly failed to give them the beds and safe staffing they need," he said.

He added: "We've seen record numbers of people unable to leave hospital on time because of the crisis in community care. It shows that you cannot fix the NHS crisis without fixing the social care crisis."