Following the announcement by the Scottish Government of plans to publish weekly A&E figures, Dr Peter Bennie, chair of BMA Scotland, said: “The pressure on NHS services and staff this winter has been relentless however despite this, the staff delivering healthcare services in Scotland have worked hard to ensure the NHS protects vulnerable patients and copes with spikes in demand.
“While the weekly publication of statistics can be a useful indicator of pressures in one part of the system, we must avoid reducing the NHS as a whole to a set of weekly performance figures, skewing the public’s perception of the health service and ignoring the system-wide pressures which stretch far beyond A&E.
“Pressure on emergency departments is symptomatic of wider pressures across the NHS, which is struggling to cope with rising demand in the face of increasing numbers of elderly people with multiple health conditions, alongside constrained resources. You can’t address problems in one part of the health service without looking at the system as a whole.”
