This is deeply ironic but I’m grateful to the BBC News website, yesterday, for doing the work for me, on this one
Some of you, not me, will have watched the barely concealed glee as BBC Scotland and other news reporters, announced the fact that only 78% of patients were seen within four hours in the last week of 2017. The freezing weather leading to increases in falls requiring treatment being up by more than 40% in Inverness and a nation-wide doubling of flu cases do, of course, explain what happened but under an SNP administration anything is fair game for the Unionist media.
However, right at the end of a long BBC Scotland News website article, they offer us the contextual information we need to put one bad week in perspective. Here it is:
‘The situation elsewhere in the UK
Last month, BBC analysis of NHS data showed that fewer patients in Scotland were waiting longer than four hours in A&E than they did in 2012/3 in contrast to England where the number had more than doubled.
It found England had a 155% rise in long waits between 2012/3 and this year, up to 2.5 million a year.
Hospitals in Wales and Northern Ireland also saw an increase over the period.
In Scotland, the number of patients waiting more than four hours fell by 9% to just over 100 000.’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-42620167
Over the whole of 2017, there were 100 000 waits over 4 hours in Scotland (5.3 million population) and 2 500 000 in England (53 million population). This suggests you were two and a half times as likely to do so in England.
Meanwhile, from the Head of Scottish News, or whatever, the propaganda and/or stupidity persists with this:
Talking-up Scotland 
Hi, you might want to change your Infographic to show 100,000 – not 100,00
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Thanks
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I can’t change it. didn’t create it. Merely inserted it.
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Sarah Smith, just another lying BBC hypocrite. Like so many others who work for that ghastly cretinous organisation.
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And appointed on what basis? A prominent Labour dad?
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Does the BBC never provide corrections for inaccurate reports? Most of the msm have sections where they report these.
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What inaccurate reports? You’ll get reported to your employer for bring both them and the BBC into disrepute!
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John, I saw a graphic on Twitter published by WoS which suggested that there were less than 15,000 patients who had to wait over 4 hours at A&E in 2017. Taken from the published data. 93.07% seen within the 4 hour target over the year as a whole. So this 100k figure doesn’t exist anywhere. This makes Sarah Smith and the BBCScotland simple propagandists and liars (in my humble opinion).
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Very interesting. so no evidence for the 100 000 figure even over the whole year? Got the link?
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Here’s the article. . . . https://wingsoverscotland.com/talking-scotland-up-and-down/
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It is also worth noting that NHS Scotland and NHS England use different definitions of waiting times. In Scotland the clock starts ticking as soon as the patient arrives at A&E and it keeps ticking until the patient leaves A&E. In England the clock is reset each time the patient is seen by someone. What does this mean? If a patient has to wait over four hours for a bed in Scotland, that’s four hours after first arriving at A&E. If a patient has to wait over four hours for a bed in England, that’s four hours after seeing a doctor who ordered the admission, but the patient might already have waited six hours to be seen by that doctor. In other words, Scotland’s time limit is far more stringent than England’s, yet Scotland’s A&Es are still outperforming England’s.
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Didn’t know that. Very interesting. Got a source I could use?
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How’s this for a source? https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2018-01-10/debates/B1BB1222-AED2-4C22-8C71-39D1084D9300/NHSWinterCrisis#contribution-7CDA27A2-66D9-477C-9AC5-7BDF322B3555
See Dr. Philippa Whitford MP’s statement at 2:09 pm, third paragraph.
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Here’s the official definition for England; https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2013/03/AE-Attendances-Emergency-Definitions-v2.0-Final.pdf The waiting time is defined on page 11.
And here’s a definition for Scotland: http://www.gov.scot/About/Performance/scotPerforms/NHSScotlandperformance/AE-LDP
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Thanks. Much appreciated
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Consider the following scenario: two people go to A&E, one in Scotland and one in England. The English patient waits three hours before being seen by a junior doctor, who decides that the patient needs to be seen by a consultant. The patient waits another three hours for the consultant, who decides the patient must be admitted to a ward. After a further three hour wait the patient is taken to a ward and admitted. The patient was admitted to the ward nine hours after arriving in A&E but is recorded as having met the four hour waiting time target.
The Scottish patient waits an hour and a half to be seen by a junior doctor, another hour and a half to be seen by a consultant, and is admitted to a ward after waiting a further hour and a half. The Scottish patient is admitted to a ward four and a half hours after arriving in A&E, and is recorded as having missed the four hour waiting time target.
And yet, even with these different recording methodologies, Scotland’s NHS is outperforming England’s.
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Sorry HB but I think it’s the same. In NHS England:
‘The clock starts from the time that the patient arrives in A&E and stops when the
patient leaves the [A&E] department on admission [to a ward], transfer from the hospital or discharge.’
If someone in A&E gets them into ward, then there’s no need to start the clock again because it’s only the time in the A&E department that has a target.
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Read the definition in the NHS England document I posted:
“The waiting time for an emergency admission via A&E is measured from the time
when the decision is made to admit, or when treatment in A&E is completed
(whichever is later) to the time when the patient is admitted.
i) Time of decision to admit is defined as the time when a clinician decides and
records a decision to admit the patient or the time when treatment that must be
carried out in A&E before admission is complete – whichever is the later.”
It’s very clear that times are calculated from the last clinician’s consultation, i.e. all time waiting to see a clinician is counted separately. Decisions to admit are made by clinicians, not receptionists, so the waiting time is always calculated from when a clinician has already seen the patient. It may be different for a discharge from A&E.
Now read the NHS Scotland definition I posted:
“95% of all A&E patients should be admitted, discharged or transferred within four hours of arrival at an A&E department across NHS Scotland”
…within four hours of arrival
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Thanks very much for this HB!
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Just heard on BBC Radio Shortbread that flu admissions are now 4 times what they were this time last year. . . . Need to hear it again not sure if it’s admissions to hospital . . . Or patients attending A & E
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Thanks HB but the same doc also says:
‘The clock starts from the time that the patient arrives in A&E and stops when the
patient leaves the [A&E] department on admission [to a ward], transfer from the hospital or discharge.’
Does:
i) Time of decision to admit is defined as the time when a clinician decides and
records a decision to admit the patient or the time when treatment that must be
carried out in A&E before admission is complete – whichever is the later.”
mean admit to a ward after the A&E department?
I’m confused
Anybody else have thoughts on this – Alasdair, Ludo, Clydebuilt…….?
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My feeling is that NHS England is counting a single A&E visit as multiple events, i.e. the time from arrival to seeing a doctor and the time from seeing a doctor to final disposal are treated as two separate times, which would make it easier to achieve targets.
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