RCEM: Government must address elective care waits AND long ED stays – both must be political priorities

3 June 2025 

Following the Scottish Health Minister stating he is ‘determined’ to cut elective waiting times the Royal College of Emergency Medicine has warned this cannot be the Government’s only focus.

Today, 3 June 2025, new data detailing A&E performance in Scotland reveals that long waiting times in the country’s Emergency Departments and the issue of delayed discharges – where people remain in hospital wards despite being well enough to leave – remain significant issues.

Published by Public Health Scotland and covering April 2025, the figures reveal that:  

• 117,827 people visited a major A&E Department (Type 1) in Scotland
• Of these, almost one in three (32.9%) waited four hours or more to been treated, admitted or discharged; more than one in every 10 people (10.3%) waited eight hours or more, and 4.2% waited 12 hours or longer.
• Each day an average of 1,854 beds were occupied by people who were considered well enough to not need to be in hospital – this is the second highest for any April since guidelines changed in 2016.
• Longer waits are now far more common than they were seven years ago. In April 2018, fewer than one in every 50 patients (1.3%) would have endured a wait of more than eight hours, with 12-hour plus waits being extremely rare (0.3%). 

The concerning data comes just a day after Health Secretary Neil Gray MSP said he was ‘determined’ to reduce long waits for elective care pledging £106m to fund an extra 150,000 appointments and procedures this year.

But the Minister made no reference to addressing long stays in Emergency Departments.

Responding Dr Fiona Hunter, RCEM Vice President Scotland, said: “The Scottish Government is clearly focusing on improving health care with £200m pledged to support the NHS.

“But while reducing waits for elective care is important – it is not a panacea, and will not address the very serious issues happening elsewhere in the system.

“Issues that I, and my members, see every day such as patients stranded in corridors for hours, and a lack of available ward beds.

“The Government must make addressing these a political priority too.

“We have to be able to get people out of ambulances and into out department as quickly as we can, to be able to find patients a ward bed when they need one and then get them home again as soon as they don’t.

“Without this flow through the hospital these dangerous and degrading long ED stays will go on, and patients will continue to be put at risk.”   

Graphic visualisations of the data compiled by RCEM can be found here.