NHS 24 “still cannot cope” with demand, Scottish Labour warned as figures showed nearly one in four calls has gone unanswered. The out-of-hours advice and triage service operates the 111 non-emergency number.
A freedom of information request from the party shows, of the 785,456 calls made to NHS 24 in the past five months, 180,940 (23 per cent) were abandoned. The unanswered call rate was more than a quarter in March (27.5 per cent) and June (27 per cent).
The average waiting time to contact the service was just over 22 minutes in June – up nearly five minutes on January’s 17.5 minutes the Daily Record reports.
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That is despite the launch of an NHS 24 call centre in Dundee – announced in January as a move to “help facilitate the increase in demand for the NHS 24 service”.
Scottish Labour’s public health spokesman Paul O’Kane said: “It’s clear NHS 24 still cannot cope with the crisis engulfing our NHS. The extra investment in NHS 24 was welcome but sticking plasters won’t do the trick as long as the SNP keeps letting our NHS fall deeper into chaos.”
Earlier in the week Edinburgh Live reported that NHS Lothian were experiencing extreme pressure due to rising Covid cases and staff absences across the region with some patients waiting 12 hours in A&E.
Conservatives in the city slammed the SNP as new government figures revealed the long waits in A&E and a drop in the overall performance of NHS Lothian compared to the rest of Scotland.
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A government spokesperson previously told Edinburgh Live that the new Urgent and Unscheduled Care Collaborative programme could help alleviate pressure on emergency health care services.
The £50 million programme would implement a range of measures to reduce A&E waiting times and improve patient experience, including alternatives to hospital-based treatment.
The health officials also encouraged people to think carefully before going to an emergency department as "for many A&E will not be the right place for their healthcare need."
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