Scottish hospitals miss A&E targets as attendance hits record high

Health boards in Scotland are struggling to meet the government’s targets on emergency waiting times in the face of growing demand, new figures have shown.

The national target for health boards is to admit, transfer, treat, or discharge at least 98% of patients in emergency departments within four hours. The latest quarterly figures from the Information Services Division show that only one of Scotland’s 14 health boards, NHS Tayside, met this target every month between March and June 2014.1 Nine health boards missed the target every month.

In June 2014 NHS Tayside achieved the highest rate of compliance with the target at 99.4% of attendances, while …