More than half a million on Scottish hospital waiting lists

The number of people on a hospital waiting list in Scotland has reached 538,000, according to the latest figures.

And about one in 10 of those has been waiting - for routine care such as knee and hip surgery - for more than a year.

The latest Public Health Scotland figures are for the three months to the end of December 2021.

The waiting list number is the highest since statistics were recorded in their current form about a decade ago.

Recent figures for NHS England showed six million people on waiting lists, a slightly higher rate than Scotland.

The latest statistics for Wales and Northern Ireland show much longer waiting lists.

• Hospital waiting lists hit six million in England

• NHS waiting times in Wales hit record high again

The 538,000 figure represents about one in 10 of the population waiting for treatment. It is not known how many people are waiting for more than one appointment.

The number waiting for treatment has increased by more than a third since the Covid pandemic began in March 2020.

'We have seen deaths'

Dr Sanjiv Chohan said it will take a long time to clear the backlog

Dr Sanjiv Chohan, clinical director for surgery at Monklands Hospital in Lanarkshire, told BBC Scotland that Covid was still having an effect on hospital capacity but staffing shortages were going to be a problem in clearing the backlog.

"Like every other hospital across the country we have lots of unfilled posts," he said.

"People have left, they have got tired, they have moved to other jobs and it's our ability to staff the hospital that is going to be absolutely key in recovering our services."

Dr Chohan said it would take a long time to clear the waiting list backlog, most likely years.

"We have to get back to the same number of operations we did before and then exceed that," he said.

He said medical staff were very aware of the harm being caused by delayed access to surgery.

"We have all seen people coming into hospital who have come to harm because their condition has not been treated in time - and we have seen deaths."

The latest Public Health Scotland data shows:

• 419,230 patients were waiting for an outpatients appointment, down slightly on September's figure

• 31,050 had been waiting for more than a year

• 119,584 were waiting to be admitted for inpatient or day care treatment, an increase of 12.4% from September

• More than a fifth (27,115) had been waiting for more than a year

• 304,344 patients were seen for outpatient appointments in the last three months of the year, still 17% down on the pre-pandemic average

• 44,127 patients were admitted for inpatient treatment, 37% down on the pre-pandemic levels

Scottish Conservative health spokesman Dr Sandesh Gulhane said the figures were extremely worrying because delay to treatment prolonged the suffering a patient endures.

"Scotland's NHS is beset by crises and yet the health secretary appears to have no strategy for getting on top of the situation. That has to change immediately," he said.

Scottish Labour health spokeswoman Jackie Baillie said: "Instead of pulling out all the stops to support our NHS and to ensure these patients are being treated, Humza Yousaf has looked on helplessly as government promise after government promise has been broken."

Scottish Lib Dem leader Alex Cole-Hamilton said retention of staff was critical and called for an urgent Burnout Prevention Strategy.

A separate report showed a further 141,262 patients were waiting to be seen for the eight key diagnostic tests - such as MRI scan, CT scan, colonoscopy, endoscopy or ultrasound.

This was an increase of 12.5% (+15,705) on the previous quarter.

David Ferguson, public affairs manager for Cancer Research UK in Scotland, said: "Staff shortages are at the heart of these delays, and we need to see urgent action. "