MSP Jackie Baillie has issued a plea for the Scottish Government to “listen” to medics’ warnings over the country’s looming A&E crisis.

The Dumbarton politician slammed the government’s record on healthcare and urged action to save urgent care before winter bites.

It comes after Scotland’s NHS notched up its worst ever August figures for A&E performance, data published last week revealed – with just under a third of A&E patients across Scotland waiting more than four hours to be seen.

NHS services in recent years have buckled under winter pressures, however, figures show a dip in performance even before these begin.

This is despite the Scottish Government’s pledge to resurrect NHS services post Covid in their Recovery Plan.

Some services still face huge backlogs and others have not yet resumed following the pandemic.

A&E departments have failed to meet the Scottish Government’s own four-hour treatment target since the pandemic began.

Now the Royal College of Emergency Medicine have warned that the government’s winter planning does not do enough to support A&E departments as they approach the busiest time of year.

Dr John Paul Loughrey, the RCEM’s Vice President for Scotland, told media outlets that the Scottish government’s plans for the NHS this winter would not improve the experience of staff or patients.

He also accused the Scottish government of “continuing to disregard” the urgent need to keep patients moving through the hospital system to stop them getting stuck in A&E.

Dr Loughrey revealed that despite discussions, no “useful measures” had been implemented to help A&E staff.

The clinician added that staff now face a daily struggle, saying the NHS now faced a crisis of the magnitude of winter pressures on a daily basis and warned: “Sometimes giving safe care can be a challenge in every A&E in Scotland.”

He also branded current conditions “inhumane” and said the continuing pressures with no end in sight are leading to “burnout” amongst hard-working frontline NHS teams.

Latest figures show that just 57.4 per cent of patients attending the Royal Alexandra Hospital’s emergency department in the week ending September 22nd were treated in line with the four-hour target.

The Scottish Government demands that 95 per cent of patients presenting at A&E are admitted, treated or transferred, within a four-hour timescale.

Performance at the RAH dropped from 66.3 per cent against target the previous week.

Jackie Baillie, Dumbarton MSP, said: “After 17 years in power, the government have no excuse for hospital corridors that look like scenes from the Crimean War.

“They seems incapable of heeding the warnings of politicians over the NHS but worse than that, they do not appear to listen to hard-working NHS staff or clinicians themselves.

“It is high time they did listen.

“Long waits should never be business as usual in A&E and we’re heading for a winter catastrophe if the SNP doesn’t step in now to stop this alarming trend.

“Patients who come to A&E are in need of emergency treatment – waiting 12 hours could be the difference between life and death.

“We cannot accept this as the new normal and should pull all the levers at our disposal to make the NHS work again.”