Queen Elizabeth University Hospital misses A&E wait target

Accident and Emergency waiting times at Scotland's newest hospital improved last week but were still below all other casualty units, new figures show.

Just 82.9% of patients at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH) in Glasgow were dealt within four hours.

This was an improvement on the previous week's figure of 77.2%, a record low for the £842m 'super' hospital, which opened in April.

Across Scotland the average figure was 93.5% dealt within four hours.

Team of experts

The government target is for 95% to be seen and either admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours.

In the week ending 11 October, the hospital, formerly known as the South Glasgow University Hospital, saw 1,704 accident and emergency patients and 291 fell outside the four-hour target.

Twenty patients were not dealt with within eight hours.

In June, the Scottish government announced that a team of experts would be sent in to help staff improve A&E waiting times at the site.

Performance rose markedly as a result, with the hospital hitting a rate of more than 90% from the end of July until the end of September.

Hospital director Anne Harkness said the figures were "particularly disappointing" and she was "fully committed" to putting in place a number of immediate steps to improve the situation.

A statement from NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said: "As we confirmed last week, a number of immediate steps to improve unscheduled care performance have been put in place.

"The figures published today for the week ending October 11 show a 6% improvement in performance compared to the previous week, however our own management data shows that there has been a further improvement in our performance which will be reported in next week's national statistics.

"We are working hard with our clinical and management teams on the ground to see us return to a consistent improvement in performance."

Winter funding

Other A&E units which were well below the government's four-hour target included Forth Valley Royal Hospital (87.8%) and Wishaw General (85%), which also had 57 people waiting more than eight hours and 13 in excess of 12 hours.

Health Secretary Shona Robison highlighted funding of £10.7m for health boards during winter, as well as £100m to tackle delayed discharge.

She said: "We are continuing to work closely with health boards as they prepare for winter. This includes issuing winter guidance to health boards almost two months earlier than last year, to ensure they build in optimum levels of resilience capacity in preparation for winter.

"We want to see long-term, sustainable change put in place in order to maintain the improvement in performance on last year, both during peaks and troughs of demand and working towards achieving what are rightly demanding targets."

The government's record on emergency waiting times was criticised by Liberal Democrat health spokesman Jim Hume.

He said: "It is worrying that this key A&E target continues to be missed, despite repeated assurances and announcements from the Scottish government and the best efforts of hard-working NHS staff."