NHS waiting times near me: A&E and ambulance wait at my hospital, where is worst waiting time in Scotland?

This NHS tracker looked at performance over the past winter and is no longer being updated.

NHS Scotland is routinely failing to hit critical ambulance response times, A&E waiting times and cancer care targets, analysis by NationalWorld shows.

With record long waits for urgent care, the country’s health and care system faces considerable pressures this winter. In a bid to support the NHS throughout the colder months the Scottish government pledged more than £600 million back in October but how much of an impact will it have on an already struggling health system?

This winter NationalWorld is tracking how well NHS Scotland is performing using the latest figures published by Public Health Scotland and the Scottish Ambulance Service. Throughout this article you can find and compare hospital figures to see how your local provider is coping.

NationalWorld is also tracking the winter pressures facing England, Northern Ireland and Wales. You can access our NHS England winter pressure tracker here and the NHS Wales tracker here.

Ambulance response times

Ambulance crews have a six minute target to reach people with life-threatening conditions, these are classified as ‘purple incidents’. You can see how your local ambulance service compares in the table below.

A&E waiting times

A&E departments have also been failing to hit targets. Guidelines say 95% of people attending A&E should be seen, admitted, discharged or transferred within four hours but the NHS has failed to hit this target since July 2020 and figures show how the situation has worsened since the Covid-19 pandemic.

You can see if your local hospital is hitting the target in the table below.

Cancelled operations

Operation cancellations are also affecting patients across the country. The most recent available data for October shows 1,671 operations were cancelled, representing 8.8% of all scheduled operations. Operations can be cancelled for various clinical and non-clinical reasons as well as by patients.

You can see what proportion of operations were cancelled at your local hospital in the table below.

Bed blocking

Delayed discharge, also known as bed blocking, is when a patient is clinically ready to be discharged from hospital but the necessary support is not in place, such as accommodation or care. In Scotland the issue remains commonplace across healthboards. On one day each month, a count is taken of patients delayed from leaving hospital. On October 27, the figure stood at 1,910 - the highest since this census began in July 2016.

Cancer care backlogs

Cancer care targets are also not routinely being met. Scottish Government guidelines state that 95% of eligible patients should wait a maximum of 62 days from urgent suspicion of cancer referral to first cancer treatment but latest figures show 74.7% of patients started treated 62 days after urgent referral. The latest figures cover the period July to September 2022 and although they do not cover the winter period they do highlight the strain cancer care is under across the country.

You can find out how your local health board performed in the latest quarter in the table below.

Overall, 1,051 people were not treated within the target timeframe. The average wait was 48 days and the longest wait for treatment was almost one year (326 days).