It’s not just at Accident and Emergency wards where patients are left waiting so long they simply give up.
Shocking figures show that 340,000 calls to NHS 24 were abandoned before the caller was able to speak to an operator in the first nine months of this year. The phone service is supposed to ease pressure on struggling A&E wards by advising people with minor ailments how they can seek alternative treatments.
But that system collapses if patients never have their calls answered in the first place. Almost 120,000 of the dropped calls were during July, August and September – with one caller waiting almost three hours to get through before hanging up.
