South Scotland MSP Colin Smyth has expressed his fear over the ability of local Accident and Emergency (A&E) Departments to cope over the coming winter as the latest figures show 1 in 3 patients in most health boards in South Scotland are already waiting more than 4 hours.

The latest NHS performance figures published today (17 October) for the week ending 8 October, showed all local boards had again missed the Scottish Government’s legally binding target of 95% of patients being admitted to the hospital, transferred or discharged within four hours of arriving at A&E.

In NHS Borders 14.5% of patients waited over 12 hours with just 61.3% seen within the target four hours. The figure for NHS Dumfries and Galloway was 77.6 % with NHS Lanarkshire at 61.6%. NHS Ayrshire and Arran fell to 67.4 %- down from 68.1 % the previous week with one in ten patients waiting more than 12 hours and in NHS Lothian 61.7 % of patients were seen on time compared to 63.8 % the week before.

South Scotland MSP Colin Smyth said: “We have barely had the first frost as autumn comes to an end but already our Accident and Emergency Departments are buckling under the strain and I really do fear that they simply won’t cope during the winter when they reach their busiest period. Staff I speak to at A&E are pretty exhausted after a relentless few years but there is sadly no light at the end of the tunnel for them.

“The 4 hour target is there for a reason, yet more and more people are having to wait in A&E for more than half a day and that’s just appalling.

“Services really are facing a winter crisis, but the Scottish Government’s half-hearted attempts to deal with the problem have failed miserably.

“We really do need to back our healthcare staff more with urgent action to protect our NHS, including tackling delayed discharge, which continues to put so much pressure on our overstretched local hospitals”