Humza Yousaf pledges to tackle winter pressures facing NHS are 'too late' (original) (raw)

Humza Yousaf's pledges to tackle winter pressures facing the NHS are “too little, too late”, it was claimed on Wednesday.

It comes after the Scottish Health Secretary said the NHS north of the border was facing an "exceptionally difficult winter".

Speaking on BBC Good Morning Scotland, he also said the "high possibility" of another wave of Covid-19 and the possible resurgence of flu would place extra pressure on the health service in the winter months.

Mr Yousaf said he would set out a winter plan for the NHS to Holyrood in the next fortnight.

He added: “Yes, we are anticipating a really difficult winter, an exceptionally difficult winter because we expect that we might get a resurgence of flu which we haven't seen in the last couple of years and there is a high possibility we suspect of course of another Covid wave, and then there's the usual issue of slips, trips and falls."

Mr Yousaf said that capacity was the most significant issue facing hospitals, and that pressure on social care is making it harder to deal with delayed discharges.

He insisted his statement to parliament would lay out what action will be taken over the course of a "really difficult" winter.

He continued: "So our focus, without giving away the details of that parliamentary statement, unsurprisingly will be on how we increase and expand the workforce to deal with those really difficult pressures but also how we invest in that social care.

"Because we need to get those delayed discharges, as many of them out of the system as possible, back into their homes and into their communities so that we can deal with those capacity issues in our hospitals."

But Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton said: “These comments from the Health Secretary come too little, too late. Mr Yousaf has the brass-neck to talk about these horrendous figures as if they were nothing to do with him.

“Make no mistake- they fall squarely at his own front door. Mr Yousaf needs to rip up his failed health plans and start from scratch.”

It comes after waiting time performance at Accident and Emergency (A&E) departments hit a new record low in figures published this week.

Public Health Scotland figures revealed 63.5 per cent of patients seen and subsequently admitted or discharged within four hours in the week up to September 11.

The figures published on Tuesday show that the number of people waiting more than eight hours in the week up to September 11 was 3,367 - a new high.

Mr Yousaf admitted the figures were “not acceptable” and said he wants to see "immediate improvement" in waiting times but that he expects difficult months ahead.

A monthly target for 95 per cent of patients to be seen and subsequently admitted or discharged within four hours has been set by the Scottish Government but not been met since July 2020.

But the Royal College of Emergency Medicine Scotland said the figures were not acceptable. Dr John-Paul Loughrey from the college warned that the delays in the week for which latest figures have been published could cost 40 lives.

He added to the BBC: "It's estimated from literature across the world that emergency department delays are associated with increased mortality, and some recent evidence pointed towards a one in 82 figure for every patient who spends more than six to eight hours in an emergency department.

"To give you some illustration of that in Scotland there were about 3,400 patients who spent more than eight hours in an ED (emergency department) in the week-ending statistics we've just seen which means that we could estimate that 40 additional lives will be lost because of these delays, within the 30 days.

"It's mortality at 30 days and that's not just dying within emergency departments, that's the increased risk of mortality, and that's with a number of factors.

"That's an association because of patients who are spending long times on hospital trolleys not receiving the care that they require in downstream wards and in other inpatient settings, that's delays in people being able to access the emergency departments to see the nurses and doctors that work there, and that's in the poor quality of care that can be offered in dangerously overcrowded emergency departments." He also called for urgent action to tackle the problems.

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