There has been a jump in patients waiting more than 12 hours in Scottish A&E departments from 784 to 76,000 in only 13 years.
Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) analysis of the latest Scottish A&E performance data reveals that the number of people experiencing stays of longer than 12 hours in Scotland’s Emergency Departments had risen from 784 people in 2011 to more than 76,000 last year.
That’s one in every 18 patients who entered through the doors of an A&E in 2024.
“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,” said John-Paul Loughrey RCEM’s vice president for Scotland.
“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,” he continued.
The figures, published earlier this month by Public Health Scotland for December 2024, also show that it was the second worst December since records began in 2011 for patients experiencing four-, eight-, and 12-hour wait times.
Delayed discharges
The high proportion of people waiting extreme amounts of time in A&E can be due to the lack of in-patient beds and an inability to discharge people well enough to go home – often because of the lack of social care support.
What has been dubbed “delayed discharges” meant that in December, there were 61,706 days spent in hospital by people who did not medically need to be there – a 6% increase compared to the same month in 2023.
Last month, Scotland’s first minister John Swinney announced a range of measures to drive down waiting times and reduce pressure on frontline services such as increasing capacity, boosting investment in primary care and improving the use of data and new digital resources.
“We cannot go on like this. Focusing on reducing elective waits is clearly important, but it cannot be the only area. Lives are being put at risk by these long waits and ending them must be a political priority,” concluded Loughrey.
