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Waiting times at all-time low says Government |
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Tuesday, 26 February 2008 |
Waiting lists for treatment by the NHS in Scotland are at an all-time low according to Cabinet Secretary for Health Nicola Sturgeon .
Sturgeon commended health boards across the country for meeting a number of key national waiting times targets that came into effect at the start of the year.
According to figures released by ISD Scotland, no patient waited more than 18 weeks for a first outpatient consultation following GP referral or for hospital in patients and day case treatment. The figures also show that the nine week waiting time target for key diagnostic tests was met with 99.7 per cent compliance.
Accident and Emergency Departments met their four hour target for admission, discharge or transfer 98 per cent of the time while 97 per cent of patients with hip fractures waited no longer than 24 hours for hip surgery following admission to a specialist unit.
Cancer waiting times statistics for the quarter ended 30 September 2007 showed a 91.6 per cent compliance with the 62-day target - a rise of 4.3 percentage points on the previous quarter and a rise of 9.1 percentage points on the same quarter last year.
Sturgeon said:
“This is a tremendous achievement by NHS Scotland who have successfully delivered a large number of challenging and demanding waiting times targets. This reflects a significant performance change across a wide range of hospital services improving patients' experience of hospital care.
“Excellent progress has also been made towards meeting the cancer waiting times targets with the Service recording the best performance ever to the period ending 30 September 2007 and ensuring that it is now well placed to deliver the 95 per cent target by the first quarter of 2008.”
The Tories welcomed the figures, but said that more could be done if the SNP Government embraced private sector involvement in the health service.
“These figures are a tribute to all frontline NHS staff, who work in very difficult, pressurised and hectic conditions. However, I firmly believe that we could be talking about an even better situation if the SNP reconsidered their refusal to form future partnerships with the independent health sector. It is nothing less than political ideology getting in the way of patient care.
“Nicola Sturgeon fails to understand the role of the independent sector. Rather than providing conflict and competition, the private sector sits alongside the NHS, providing more choice for patients and helping to reduce waiting times,” said Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Health & Wellbeing, Mary Scanlon.
Scanlon also identified other areas where patients were waiting for long periods for treatment:
“If we are to continue with the present trend of prioritising along the lines of Ministerial targets and not clinical need then much more must be done to help patients waiting for drug and alcohol treatment, infertility treatments and mental health support. Currently they are being left to languish on even longer waiting lists. This is particularly an issue for couples waiting for fertility treatment where there is an age bar.
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