Scottish Conservative Shadow Health Secretary and Dr Sandesh Gulhane has today written to the UK Statistics Authority over inconsistent reporting of A&E waiting times at major Scottish hospitals.
A whistleblower told The Scotsman that patients presenting at the Acute Assessment Unit (AAU) of Glasgow’s Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH) are deliberately not included in Public Health Scotland’s A&E Department waiting time statistics. By contrast, waiting time statistics for the Western General Infirmary in Edinburgh do include patients presenting at their medical assessment unit.
The article estimates that 2,000 patients each month are being omitted from QEUH’s waiting time statistics – more than 25% of current total attendances, which have averaged around 7,500 per month in 2022.
The letter from Dr Gulhane, who is a Glasgow MSP, comes after the UK Statistics Authority wrote to the Scottish Government last week to advise that their reporting of A&E stats could “potentially mislead some patients about the length of time they may have to wait”, due to incomplete reporting.
The percentage of emergency patients being seen within the target time of four hours reached a new low this week, with only 63.1% admitted, transferred or discharged in the target timeframe.
Scottish Conservative Shadow Health Secretary, Dr Sandesh Gulhane said: “Our emergency departments are in crisis and it feels like A&E waiting times are getting worse every week, yet these deeply worrying reports show that we may only be hearing half the story.
“It seems clear that A&E reporting is woefully inconsistent across the country, and that the public is not being informed of the true extent of waiting times in Scotland’s hospitals.
“At best this may be considered unprofessional, at worst, some may regard it as a deliberate attempt to corrupt the data.
“If we are to fully hold the SNP to account over their dire mismanagement of our health service, we need to know the full picture of Scotland’s emergency care system.
“I have asked the UK Statistics Authority to investigate this issue and I urge the SNP Government to bring in consistent reporting requirements in order to improve the quality of health data.
“For too long the SNP have hidden behind stats and spin to avoid dealing with the disaster in our NHS. They must come clean with the Scottish public – and, more importantly, take action to deal with this ongoing crisis.”
Notes:
Please see attached a copy of Sandesh Gulhane’s letter to the UK Statistics Authority, Wednesday 9 November 2022.
A&E waiting time statistics for the week ending 30 October 2022 show the lowest percentage on record for patients seen within four hours. Only 63.1% of patients were discharged, admitted or transferred within the target timeframe (Public Health Scotland, 8 November 2022, link).
An average of 7,560 monthly A&E attendances were recorded at Queen Elizabeth University Hospital Glasgow this year, so far. From January to September 2022, QEUH recorded 7,559.9 A&E patients per month on average, with a low of 6735 patients in January and peak of 8287 in August (Public Health Scotland, 1 November 2022, link).
The UK Statistics Authority wrote to the Scottish Government on Monday last week to advise that data on their NHS Inform dashboard could “potentially mislead some patients about the length of time they may have to wait”. The letter noted that while the NHS Inform dashboard shows the numbers of patients treated in the last quarter and their median wait times by clinical specialty, “patients who have not yet been treated, some of whom may have been waiting a long time, are not included in these statistics”. (UK Statistics Authority, 31 October 2022, link).