How SNP's bold claim about NHS was undermined as soon as they'd made it
Royal College of Emergency Medicine warns long waits in A&E are putting lives at risk and NHS staff are ‘crying out for help’
The SNP is “the only party with a credible plan for the NHS”. Health Secretary Neil Gray’s claim was a bold one, given the state of the health service. It prompted an obvious question: why, if the government has such a plan, have they not deployed it?
Last year, John Swinney made a similarly bold claim: by March this year, no patient would have been waiting more than a year for treatment. It will surprise no one that the Scottish Government recently admitted this target had been missed, with the latest figures, for January, showing some 53,000 people had been waiting more than 12 months.
Unfortunately for Gray, his claim was further undermined by the news that hospital accident and emergency waiting times in February were the worst for the month since records began in 2008. Just 66.4 per cent of patients were admitted, transferred or discharged within the four-hour target time, compared to the target of 95 per cent.
Dr Fiona Hunter, the Royal College of Emergency Medicine’s vice-president for Scotland, said: “Long waits in emergency departments are dangerous for patients and, for the sickest patients who require admission into a ward, are associated with increased risk of death. The state of our departments is utterly dire. This winter has left our members... on their knees. We are crying out for help.”
There was yet more bad news for Gray, with figures showing an increase in delayed discharge, or ‘bed blocking’, in hospitals. The number of days spent in hospital by patients medically fit to be discharged hit 55,547 in February, up by 2 per cent on the same month last year. The SNP has spent a decade talking about tackling this problem.
Even the supposed good news – a 6.7 per cent increase in planned operations in February – was tempered by the fact that the total was still less than the typical numbers before the pandemic.
The broken promises, the steady drumbeat of bad news, and the cries of despair from medical staff leave only one ‘credible’ conclusion: the SNP are part of the problem, and their talk of solutions is self-serving cant.
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