Patients in Scotland are facing an average wait of almost 2 hours in hospital casualty departments. The good news is that this falls within the national waiting time targets of four hours. The bad news? Waiting times are increasing.
According to The Times, Nicola Sturgeon, the Health Secretary has announced that waiting times have risen from an average wait on one hour and 10 minutes in 1999, the year of Scottish devolution, up to one hour and 44 minutes in A&E’s in Scotland between April and June 2009.
Conservative public health spokesman Jackson Carlaw was damning in his critique of the statistics stating, “they do not reflect well on the health policies of any administration since the advent of devolution” and urged the Health Secretary to “investigate these appalling figures before making clear what the government intends to do to turn things around”.
Increased waiting times create more and more difficulties. It is strange to think that someone entering the accident and emergency department could potentially have to wait up to four hours to be seen by someone and there is a danger that a continual increase in waiting times will lead to more patients not receiving the care that they need when they need it. There is an argument that if a medical expert were to fail to attend a patient at a hospital within that 4 hour period that the hospital will be failing to fulfil its duty of care towards patients. However, in order for a claim to be brought the patient would have to show that the increased waiting time caused further injury to the patient which they might not otherwise have suffered.
It should be noted that the number of people who visit A&E has increased since 1999 from 1.4 million a year to 1.5 million however, it is difficult not to feel that this is merely being trotted out as an excuse and it is vital that the health secretary takes steps to deal with the rise in patient waiting times.
