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Healthcare Crisis Scottish Health Secretary accused of ‘insulting NHS staff’

SCOTLAND’S embattled Health Secretary Shona Robison was accused of “insulting NHS staff” today after she blamed bad weather for a catalogue of missed treatment targets.

Labour said Ms Robison was “trotting out the same tired lines” as new figures revealed that almost 18,000 patients are waiting more than six weeks for key diagnostic tests.

The SNP government set a standard waiting time of six weeks for procedures such as CT and MRI scans, which help early detection of conditions such as cancer or brain tumours.

A target has been set for 90 per cent of patients to wait less than six weeks, but stats showed that, at the end of March, 17,139 were waiting longer. This means only 80.6 per cent of patients were tested within the target time, compared to 86.7 per cent at the same time last year.

Scottish Labour health spokesman Anas Sarwar said: “These figures are frankly unacceptable. Too many patients are waiting too long for these key tests.

“These standards are in place to ensure that people with potentially serious conditions get the benefit of early detection and have the best possible chance of a full recovery.”

The Scottish government also set an 18-week target for the time between a patient’s referral and treatment. But more than 55,000 patients waited longer for treatment in the first three months of this year.

And under a flagship SNP law, patients have a legal right to treatment within 12 weeks for conditions such as those of the knees and eyes. 

But figures show the government flouted its own law 16,772 times in the first three months of 2018, meaning it has been broken a whopping 134,804 times since it was introduced in 2012.

Ms Robison, who has faced calls to resign over a financial scandal and mental health failures at her local NHS Tayside, said: “This period covered a challenging winter for the NHS and severe weather in early March which caused disruption that took hospitals time to recover from.

“So it is testament to the hard work and dedication of staff that the average wait for patients receiving treatment within the treatment-time guarantee was eight weeks and that 1.6 million patients have received their treatment within the guarantee since it was introduced.”

But Mr Sarwar hit back, saying: “Shona Robison is getting increasingly desperate in her attempts to explain NHS performance on her watch. To trot out the same tired lines she tried at the start of the month is just insulting to our NHS staff.”

He also commended the staff for their “phenomenal work” during the “Beast from the East” snowstorms earlier this year.

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