Scotland’s outpatient appointment waiting lists are growing - Susan Dalgety
Health Secretary Neil Gray may think he is making “good progress” tackling waiting times in A&E departments, but he deserves a big fat fail for his performance on reducing waits for outpatient appointments.
Latest figures show that thousands of Scots have waited more than two years for either treatment or a diagnosis, and there are an incredible 63,400 patients who have been waiting for more than 12 months.
There is no point in Scottish Government spin doctors telling long-suffering folk that the current NHS budget is the biggest to date (thanks to the UK government’s largesse) while one in six Scots are languishing on a never-ending waiting list.
My husband is one of those stuck in limbo. He has what is called in the trade a basal cell carcinoma on his face, or skin cancer as we non-medical types call it. It started several years ago as a tiny blemish below his right eye. At the time, his GP reassured him that it was of little concern, but it kept growing and shows no sign of stopping.
Last autumn, his GP decided it was time a dermatologist dealt with it and referred him for treatment. Since then nothing. The tumour is getting bigger, so his GP sent a second letter recently asking for an urgent referral, but NHS Lothian’s dermatology department still cannot give my now increasingly-concerned husband a realistic timetable for its removal. He has been on the non-urgent waiting list since last September and could easily still be on it when this September rolls round.
Now skin cancer of this type almost never spreads beyond the skin, but very rarely it can enter a patient’s lymph nodes or bones. So while the tumour is not going to kill my husband, it is disfiguring his face and he is increasingly embarrassed by the lump. And of course, the longer he has to wait for treatment, the larger the tumour and the resulting scar will be.
Understanding Scotland – a quarterly survey which measures the issues most important to Scots – released its latest report last week.
Nearly half (49 per cent) put healthcare as the most important issue facing the country. If only the Scottish Government gave it the same priority.