Accident and emergency waiting times in Scotland have improved from a record low, but less than two-thirds of patients are being seen within the target time.
According to new figures released today 63.4 per cent of people who attended A&E in the week to December 4 were seen and subsequently admitted or discharged within four hours. That figure has risen from the previous week, which saw a new low of 63.1 per cent.
The Scottish Government aims to have 95 per cent of people seen within the four-hour target. Of the 25,450 people who attended A&E in the week to December 4, 9,314 waited longer than four hours, 3,048 waited more than eight hours, and 1,276 more than 12.
Scottish Lib Dems leader Alex Cole-Hamilton said the full focus of the government needs to be on tackling the crisis in the NHS and not about independence.
He added: "We are only in the first week of what everyone agrees will be the hardest winter but staff are already overwhelmed.
"This is a major crisis but as the SNP descend into internecine fighting over whether to work with Alex Salmond, it's painfully clear to all that their focus is not where it needs to be.
"Scottish Liberal Democrat have called for a burnout prevention strategy, a staff assembly that puts their expertise to good use and an urgent inquiry into the avoidable deaths linked to the crisis in emergency care. Humza Yousaf has opposed or voted down every one.
“Patients and staff have been taken for granted for far too long. This situation cannot continue without a change in direction- more weeks of the Health Secretary rolling out the same tired excuses is not good enough. If Humza Yousaf can't do that then he will have to go."
While, Scottish Conservative shadow health spokesman Dr Sandesh Gulhane MSP, said: “These horrendous statistics expose yet again that Humza Yousaf’s mismanagement has left our A&E departments unable to cope with patient demand.
"Excess waits lead inevitably, and tragically, to avoidable deaths. So it’s completely unacceptable that more than a third of patients consistently wait more than four hours, and utterly scandalous that the number waiting in excess of half a day has risen again.
"The health secretary has lost the trust of overwhelmed frontline staff and suffering patients. They are paying a heavy price for his ever-growing list of failures and his ineffectual winter action plan."
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