South Scotland Labour MSP has said that waiting time for key clinical tests at NHS Ayrshire and Arran are unacceptable.

The comments come after figures released today (27 November) by the Scottish Government’s Information Services Division (ISD) Scotland show that 29,165 patients across Ayrshire and Arran have waited more than 6 weeks for diagnostics tests.

A standard waiting time of six weeks was set by the Scottish Government in 2009 for diagnostic tests such as CT and MRI scans to aid early detection of conditions like cancer or brain tumours.

The latest figures from ISD Scotland mean that 37.2% of patients across Ayrshire and Arran waiting for a key diagnostic test this year have had to wait longer than 6 weeks. This was a 1.2% increase from the same period last year.

Colin Smyth MSP said, “The Scottish Government rightly set a standard waiting time for diagnostic tests such as CT and MRI scans to help early detection and therefore improve the life chances for patients. But that waiting time has been broken too often in NHS Ayrshire and Arran. It is unacceptable that the number of people waiting over 6 weeks for a diagnostic test is increasing.

The SNP Government must make sure they use their upcoming budget to allocate resources to tackle the NHS recruitment crisis and ensure our NHS has the resources it needs. The recent bail out of NHS Ayrshire and Arran by the Government has simply papered over the cracks and doesn’t tackle the long term Government underfunding of our NHS” .

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