During November 2018, 91.3% of attendances at A&E services were admitted, transferred or discharged within 4 hours.
https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Emergency-Care/Publications/2019-01-03/Summary/index.asp
In NHS England, only 81.1% were seen in 4 hours, in Type 1 departments, in November 2018.
Talking-up Scotland 
91% discharge performance rate? Well that sure is not my experience. I attended Ayr A&E and wasn’t discharged until the following day, much more than 4 hours!
But then, I did arrive with a deep wrist cut – gardening – and a tourniquet on my forearm, I was seen to immediately by a nurse, then a specialist, despatched to a ward bed, and operated on the following day. Sorry if I dragged the discharge performance down.
I received simply outstanding treatment. The staff were cheery and nicely informal, so the SCALP claims of overstressed, breaking point NHS staff isn’t my observation.
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Thanks. My experience too has been unlike the SCALP view.
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What were you gardening with? – a machete? 😉 Hope you are getting better 🙂
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Maybe I’m misunderstanding, but once transferred to a ward, surely A&E have done their bit, so your impact on their stats would only include the time up to the transfer.
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Looking at the bar chart, it appears that the trend is for ATTENDANCES is INCREASING. The graph appears to show that the DISCHARGE rate is DECREASING. however, the gradient of attendance increase looks greater than that for discharge rate decine. Could this imply that A&E staff are actually increasing the actual numbers being discharged. Obviously, this is only an impression and would have to take into account factors like the rate of increase in the population of Scotland and the age profile of those presenting – are older people more likely to require treatment?
Possibly, we have reached the optimal percentage who can reasonably expect to be discharged within 4 hour,. There will always be cases like that of Gavin C Barrie, which require longer treatment. When I reported with an epistaxis, a strong factor in my longer than 4 hour stay was that I was on blood thinning drugs, which were slowing the rate of clotting. I also had to be taken across the city by ambulance to another hospital to be discharged into the care of a specialised unit. However, before leaving the first hospital, the appropriate action to stop the bleeding had been taken.
Nomedia and SCALP has to move away from trivial cavilling and to contribute constructively to the dialogue on feasible improvement.
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“…contribute constructively to the dialogue on feasible improvement.” – that! Yes, that’s what we should have! Why is it so difficult, why does it seem like an impossible pipe-dream?? Why aren’t people fully engaged in making all our services good for everyone?
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Yes an optimal performance beyond which unreasonable staffing is required?
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Heheh, gardening with a machete, sounds like a difficult hedge trim there. Greatest of sympathy for such a traumatic event though Gavin.
Well, GMS on radio Scotland managed to get their act together and start at normal time this morning, so I had the usual battering of all the Scottish public services to listen to (tired old trope I think is the phrase). Did I hear Gary say to the CEO of the waste disposal company that’s in difficulty ‘[the position of your companies or something] are not very OPAQUE’ , then that CEO reply, ‘they are very opaque!’ – I maybe still have the addled holiday mind, surely they both meant ‘transparent’? (Gary was badgering him about which company was which and why he didn’t put the one no longer trading into receivership, Gary also ignored the bits about the uk government asking for illegal things of the company, great investigative journalism there Gary).
Anyhow, on the phone-in this morning, a chap called Paul came on to tell of his experience with the NHS – it was a good one – but the most interesting thing he said was that he was really really surprised at the excellent performance and treatment, and how quickly he was seen because all we hear in the news all the time is how bad waiting times are and how poor the NHS are at meeting targets. He repeated how surprised he was because of ‘all you hear in the news,,,’. He seemed genuinely taken aback and wholly unaware that our news services are a bunch of lying toe rags. The host veered the subject away from the news aspect – don’t tell me they don’t know what they are doing!! – but I wonder if Paul’s brain cells are starting to maybe connect the dots and realise,,, if the news doesn’t tell me what is real in something as simple as this,,, I wonder what else,,,
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