Health Secretary under pressure on targets

Scotland’s Health secretary Shona Robison has said she will consider introducing targets for patients to be given scan results, after reports patients have waited over a year to find out they have  terminal conditions.

A target for receiving tests within nine weeks was introduced in 2009, but there is no similar target for analysis and telling the patient the results.

In a radio interview this morning Robison said she has been under pressure to remove targets.

“We're in the middle of looking at targets as part of the national conversation and I have to say is what I'm told all the time is that we have too many targets.

“We need to get the right targets and certainly that's something that I'm willing to consider,” she told BBC’s Good Morning Scotland.

Meanwhile Scottish Labour have accused the Scottish Government of failing to meet existing targets, particularly those relating to people being discharged from hospital in a timely manner.

In Yesterday’s First Minister’s Questions leader Kezia Dugdale said: “Time and again, the SNP Government introduces lots of targets with great fanfare, but ministers then run for cover when they fail to deliver on them.

“It was in deepest winter when Shona Robison pledged to abolish delayed discharge. Patients in Scotland spent 46,873 days in hospital beds when they did not need to be there. According to figures published this week that increased to 47,797 days at the peak of summer. Patients are rightly concerned about what will happen this winter.”