Soaring long waits at Scotland’s A&E departments has likely contributed to more than 1,000 needless deaths.

SNP ministers have been accused of an “appalling mismanagement” of the NHS after figures revealed the number of Scots waiting more than 12 hours in emergency departments has soared by 100 per cent over the past 14 years.

The Scottish Government has been warned the excessive waits for emergency treatment has likely contributed to more than 1,000 deaths since 2011.

The number of Scots waiting longer than 12 hours has soared

Analysis by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) found 76,346 people waited more than 12 hours at emergency departments (A&E) last year, compared to just 784 in 2011.

The research shows more than three times as many people waited more than 12 hours in Scotland’s A&E service last year alone than in the full decade up to 2020.

The RCEM said one in every 18 patients who arrived at an A&E department in 2024 waited more than a dozen hours. The organisation said high waits were “unacceptable” and “dangerous” and told SNP ministers that tackling them must be a priority.

First Minister John Swinney has acknowledged that “too many people have waited too long to receive the care they need”, adding “I intend to change that”.

He said: “That is why I am driving forward an action plan to renew our NHS, making it easier for people to get appointments with their GPs and delivering a major increase in acute capacity, with an additional 150,000 appointments and procedures.”

The statistics, based on figures from Public Health Scotland (PHS), show waiting times had begun to increase in 2016, when 1,005 people experienced a wait of more than 12 hours in A&E, before surging during the Covid pandemic.

December was the second worst month since records began in 2011 for patients experiencing four, eight and 12-hour wait times.

The RCEM suggested the prolonged waiting times could be down to the lack of in-patient beds and an inability to discharge people well enough to go home, called delayed discharge, which is often due to a lack of social care support.

In December 2024, there were 61,706 days spent in hospital by people who did not medically need to be there – a 6 per cent increase compared to the same month in 2023.

Dr John-Paul Loughrey, the RCEM’s vice-president for Scotland, said: “When you look at the data over the past 14 years, the reality of the number of people now facing extremely long waits in this country is shockingly clear.

“The figure from 2011 shows just a few hundred people waited 12 hours or longer. But astonishingly last year, this figure was well over 75,000. It is unacceptable and it is dangerous – and many of those patients will be stuck on trolleys receiving so called ‘corridor care’ – because we just don’t have enough in-patient beds.”

He pointed to “those who keep saying Scotland’s performance is the best in the UK”, warning that “being the ‘least worst’ is not something to be lauding”.

Dr Loughrey added: “We cannot go on like this. Focusing on reducing elective waits is clearly important, but it cannot be the only area. Lives are being put at risk by these long waits and ending them must be a political priority.”

Scottish Conservative shadow health secretary Dr Sandesh Gulhane said: “These devastating findings highlight the SNP’s appalling mismanagement of our A&E services.

“Successive failed SNP health secretaries have allowed Scotland’s NHS to fall into a state of permanent crisis and they have no cure to fix it.

“It is bad enough that a third of patients are routinely not seen within the SNP’s four-hour target time, but it is downright dangerous that tens of thousands waited over half a day last year to be seen.

“The RCEM’s modelling highlights that over 1,000 lives will have been lost due to these excessive waits, despite the best efforts of frontline staff who have been failed by the SNP’s inaction. This appalling situation in A&E departments up and down Scotland cannot go on for suffering patients and dedicated staff.”

Scottish Labour Health spokesperson Jackie Baillie said “This damning analysis lays bare the disastrous scale of the crisis in our NHS under the SNP.

Scottish Labour deputy leader Dame Jackie Baillie | PA

“The SNP’s dangerous incompetence is putting lives at risk and letting down hard-working NHS staff.”

Scottish LibDem leader Alex Cole-Hamilton added: “It could not be clearer - the SNP have failed patients and staff across Scotland. We’ve seen record numbers of people unable to leave hospital on time because of the crisis in community care. It shows that you cannot fix the NHS crisis without fixing the social care crisis.

“Ultimately, a sustained, long-term plan for our NHS is going to require a change of government.”

PHS’s own data found slightly higher numbers of A&E waits compared to the analysis by the RCEM, which used the data published by PHS at the time of release.

While the RCEM found 76,346 Scots waited more than a dozen hours in A&E in 2024, PHS’s data put this number at 77,563. The public body said the discrepancy could be due to a recent change in definitions for A&E stats, which appears to have impacted statistics retroactively.

A spokesperson said: “Slight differences remain in RCEM archive figures compared to PHS figures for 2020 onwards, which we believe are likely to relate to changes to definitions used for our A&E statistics, to align with the revised 4-hour standard.

“PHS has now received a copy of the RCEM archive numbers and will investigate further to confirm. The PHS publication states that changes to definitions have been backdated in our statistics, and we published a paper in advance outlining impacts on performance.”

The A&E figures follow a report last month that found there had been a “devastating collapse in care standards” in Scotland’s hospitals, with patients “routinely coming to harm” and unable to access basic services.

The report by the union said “demoralised” staff across the nation’s hospitals have witnessed patients going into cardiac arrest while forced to lay in corridors due to a lack of beds.

Health Secretary Neil Gray said: “Our A&E departments have continued to face significant pressure, but this is not confined to Scotland.

Health Secretary Neil Gray Picture: Michael Gillen | NationalWorld

“The Scottish Government is determined to drive improvements, reduce waiting lists and tackle delayed discharge, all of which will improve the flow of patients through hospital and ease pressures on A&E. I met with the RCEM earlier this week and took the opportunity to listen and provide updates on the action we are taking to support improvements and reduce delays for patients.

“If passed by Parliament, our Budget will provide an additional £200 million to help backlogs, improve capacity and remove blockages that keep patients in hospital longer than necessary, ensuring we can deliver the best possible service for patients.”

'Appalling': SNP under fire for soaring A&E waits causing more than 1,000 needless deaths

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