A health board has been slammed for “verging on scandalous” figures showing just 6% of patients suffering from chronic pain saw a specialist for help within the 18-week waiting time.
In the last three months of 2017, 235 patients had their first appointment at the pain clinic at NHS Ayrshire and Arran.
Of those 14 had been waiting 18 weeks or less – the target set by the Scottish Government – with 221 people waiting longer than this.
Across Scotland specialist pain services saw 2,616 new patients in the period October to December last year, with less than three quarters (72.3%) waiting 18 weeks or less for their appointment.
Six health boards – NHS Borders, NHS Fife, NHS Lanarkshire, NHS Lothian, NHS Orkney and NHS Shetland – managed to see 100% of patients within this time, while NHS Forth Valley saw nine out of 10 patients (90.7%) in 18 weeks or less.
Scottish Conservative health spokesman Miles Briggs said: “Life can be utterly miserable for someone living with chronic pain.
“To make them wait more than 18 weeks for an appointment is verging on scandalous, and it’s hard to see what the excuse for this could be.
“The national average of 72.3 per cent is bad enough, but for one health board to be seeing just 6% of people in this time is shocking.”
The Tory MSP added: “Chronic pain is a matter of extreme importance and should be regarded as such by the SNP government.
“The nationalists have been in charge of health for more than 10 years, and the failings in this area are all on them.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel