Critical care is grinding to a halt as SNP fail to tackle delays

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton has today warned that critical care is grinding to a halt as a new report warned that the proportion of ICU patients having a delayed transfer to another unit has increased significantly over the past two years.

Figures published in Public Health Scotland’s Audit of Critical Care in NHS Scotland, reveal that in 2022, 62% of ICU patients were delayed for more than 4 hours. This is a substantial increase compared with previous years of 52% in 2021 and 44% in 2020.

A similar situation was recorded in high-dependency units with 59% delayed in 2022 compared to 52% in 2021 and 50% in 2020.

Almost 20% (4 out 22) ICUs did not achieve compliance with three minimum standards and quality indicators (MSQIs).

Mr Cole-Hamilton said:

“Critical care is grinding to halt because they cannot get patients transferred fast enough.

“These blockages are having a major impact across the health system and on the patients waiting to leave ICU and High Dependency units.

 "There is no shortage of goodwill and dedication on the part of NHS staff, but they don’t have the beds, safe staffing and resources they need.

"Scottish Liberal Democrats are putting forward positive and practical plans to fix our NHS. We would bring forward a new strategy to retain staff and tackle burnout, create a world-beating system to tackle Scotland’s mental health crisis, and scrap the billion pound takeover of social care so that can be spent instead on the community staff and services that enable people to leave hospital.”