Scottish Government must take urgent action to stop hospital A&E delays because of 'delayed discharge' problem – Scotsman comment

Last week, The Scotsman published an article by Dr Lailah Peel, an accident-and-emergency doctor and deputy chair of the British Medical Association Scotland, in which she spoke of how the NHS was “failing daily”.

"Ambulances queue outside our A&Es… not because we’re overwhelmed at the front door but at the back door instead. Our A&Es are too often at a standstill simply because we’ve got “nae beds” – our hospitals are bursting at the seams, because discharges are being delayed mostly due to failings within the capacity of our social care services,” Dr Peel wrote.

‘Bed blocking’, as it is sometimes called, has been a problem in Scotland for years and, while Covid and its knock-on effects have brought the issue to a head, the situation would be nothing like as bad as it is currently if the Scottish Government treated the issue more seriously before the pandemic struck.

In January, the Scottish Government revealed it would spend £8 million to buy about 300 care home beds in order to transfer patients stuck in hospital through no fault of their own. Now the new Health Secretary, Michael Matheson, has suggested he may increase this fund.

Given 35 to 40 per cent of patients in A&E are not seen within the four-hour target time – a situation Dr Peel said she had stopped saying sorry for because it “simply is too painful, apologising so many times in a day to patients and relatives, and absorbing some of the guilt for this chaos” – it is a sign of hope that Matheson recognises that more must be done. He now needs to get on and do it.