“When staff are having to constantly firefight and emergency care is prioritised, there is simply no flex in the system to address waiting lists for elective care.
“The Scottish Government has made National Treatment Centres a central plank of long-term plans to tackle waiting lists and we previously warned that delays to their building could have a serious impact on plans to reduce the time patients are having to wait for vital treatment.
“However, with the extent of the staffing shortages in the NHS, there are also questions over how they can be resourced to enable the hundreds of thousands of extra appointments pledged to be delivered.
“The latest figures on planned operations activity underline that our NHS simply does not have the resources it needs and there is an urgent need for a long-term vision on how to make it sustainable, including a proper medical workforce plan to recruit and retain the staff we need.”
Health Secretary Neil Gray said: “Despite continued pressure on our health service it is encouraging to see an increase in the number of planned operations in the last year, compared to the previous twelve months.
“We are working closely with health boards across Scotland to maximise capacity and to ensure that any patients who have had their operations cancelled are seen as quickly as possible.
“Through an additional £200million investment contained in the Budget to reduce waiting times and improve flow through hospital, we will create 150,000 extra appointments and procedures using greater use of regional and national working.”
