NHS Orkney staff praised for A&E figures

Health Secretary Shona Robison has praised staff in NHS Orkney for treating 99 per cent of accident & emergency patients within four hours in January.

A&E figures for the month of January show Balfour Hospital’s A&E department treated 99 per cent of people within four hours – far exceeding the national average of 85.4 per cent.

Health boards in Scotland are expected to sustain at least 95 per cent of A&E patients being treated within four hours, as a step towards achieving 98 per cent, which is among the toughest A&E standard anywhere in the world.

As well as the monthly A&E waiting times figures, the first weekly publication of A&E waits at core sites were also published this week.These figures will be available on the new NHS Performs website.

The weekly figures show that NHS Orkney treated 93.3 per cent of A&E patients within four hours between February 16 to 22. This is again well above the national average of 86.1 per cent.

These figures come as statistics on delays in discharging patients from hospital showed that during the January 2015 census – a one day snap shot – there were no delays over four weeks in Orkney and only two people delayed for longer than the recommended 72 hour period. Nationally delays in patients leaving hospital beyond the 72 hour period dropped from 947, at the previous census in October, to 776.

Ms Robison said: “Staff in NHS Orkney are continuing to do a fantastic job to treat people as quickly as possible. This winter has been a very challenging time with record number of attendances across Scotland and more people being admitted with complex illnesses.”