NHS chiefs in Scotland postpone non-emergency operations
GPs also told to only see urgent patients in effort to ‘decongest’ the system as crisis in health service deepens
Health board chiefs in Scotland have suspended non-emergency operations and ordered GPs to only see urgent patients after Nicola Sturgeon said mass cancellations would be permitted.
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (NHS GGC), the country's largest board, said it was pausing all non-urgent elective surgeries to help ease pressures at their emergency departments.
Board chiefs gave no timescale for suspension, which will be reviewed on an ongoing basis, but said it would help prioritise urgent treatment and cancer care.
Neighbouring NHS Ayrshire and Arran announced a three-week suspension in an attempt to "decongest" the board's hospitals.
In a statement, the board also said its area's GP practices had been asked to see "urgent and emergency care patients only" so they could cope with "overwhelming demand across general practice."
Although some Scottish health boards suspended non-emergency operations during the pandemic, the announcement lays bare the extreme pressure the country's NHS is under.
It came after Ms Sturgeon used a press conference on Monday to state that health boards would be permitted to introduce blanket cancellations of non-urgent operations.
She admitted on Monday that Scotland’s hospitals are “almost completely full”, with occupancy rates of 95 per cent. An 85 per cent occupancy rate is generally seen as the maximum level before patients are put at risk.
But doctors’ leaders warned that a package of measures unveiled to ease the crisis, such as funding more care home beds to free up capacity in hospitals, were unlikely to be enough to stop the “harrowing” situation which had developed on wards and in A&Es.
Announcing the suspension of non-urgent procedures, NHS GGC said: "This decision was not taken lightly and is under constant review. We would like to apologise to patients waiting for an elective procedure, we will make every possible effort to offer them an alternative date at the first opportunity.
"NHSGGC has also recently opened up additional winter capacity to provide more beds, with more to open in the coming weeks, and we are rolling out a new patient flow model to help improve movement through our hospitals."
The announcements came as a senior doctor warned SNP ministers to drop "patient-blaming language" around "unnecessary attendances" at emergency departments.
Lailah Peel, the deputy chairwoman of the British Medical Association in Scotland, said demands that patients seek alternative support from NHS 24, pharmacies or GP practices were unhelpful.
She wrote on Twitter: "This shows a lack of understanding of the current crisis. Exit block is the problem in A&E - the lack of flow through our EDs (emergency departments). Not the number of people turning up."