John Swinney has apologised to a woman who faced a 50-hour wait in A&E, amid angry clashes in Holyrood on the performance of the NHS.
The First Minister said he would write to Lynn Nelson, who told of being left in a holding wing at University Hospital Wishaw for more than two days.
Conservative MSP Meghan Gallacher raised her case at First Minister’s Questions saying she had spoken to Mrs Nelson and the patient described the North Lanarkshire hospital as being like a “warzone”.
Mr Swinney said: “I apologise for the long wait experienced by the patient referred to by Meghan Gallacher and to anyone whose experience of the NHS has fallen short.
“Services have been under exceptional pressure due to a number of issues, including a rise in winter illness as I recounted to Parliament.”
The First Minister said he will hold further meetings with health boards, aimed at ensuring each core A&E department has a frailty unit which can shorten stays.
Labour health spokeswoman Dame Jackie Baillie criticised the SNP’s handling of A&E performance, saying: “Each week the First Minister says sorry and each week it gets worse.”
This prompted an angry response from the SNP leader, who said Dame Jackie’s assertions were “not true”.
Amid shouting from the opposition benches, including the Conservatives, Presiding Officer Alison Johnstone was repeatedly forced to step in to try and calm the chamber.
Mr Swinney said NHS performance is “not where we want it to be” but there has been a week-on-week improvement since late December.
He added: “Jackie Baillie should stop running down the staff of the Scottish National Health Service.”
Mrs Nelson’s ordeal began on December 17 when a nurse at her GP’s surgery in Carluke advised her husband to take her to hospital. The nurse told them there was no point waiting for an ambulance as it could take more than six hours to arrive.
Mr Nelson, 45, said they found the hospital like “a war zone” with people “lying on the floor” in the waiting area.
He said: “Being an NHS employee myself and a member of the Royal College of Nursing , I thought, ‘This is not what our NHS is supposed to be. It is broken. This is not healthcare.’”
After four hours, Mrs Nelson was placed on a trolley in ‘Ambulatory Care’ – a holding zone. Her husband went home and arrived at lunchtime the next day to find her still in the same place. She was barely speaking, unwashed and still wearing the same clothes.
At 3.30pm she complained of a searing pain in her right lung but it was not addressed until Mr Nelson complained to a charge nurse at 7pm. The following day at 1pm, more than 48 hours after she first arrived, the couple were told Mrs Nelson had a partially collapsed lung.
Cold weather and flu put ‘extra strain’ on hospitals However, there was still no sign of her being moved to a proper ward with a bed. At 6pm on December 19, Mrs Nelson was finally transferred to Ward 7 for treatment – 53 hours after she first arrived.
Mrs Nelson, who was discharged on December 23 just in time for Christmas with her family, is still coping with the aftershock of her illness and recuperating at home.
The First Minister laid out a plan to improve Scotland’s ailing health service in a speech in Edinburgh this week.
Mr Swinney announced plans to provide 150,000 more appointments and procedures, as well as a £10.5 million increase in funding for GPs as well as a pledge to give more funding to primary care in the future, and pledging the creation of “frailty teams” to be at every A&E in the country to help those who could “bypass” emergency departments and free up capacity.
He said: “The first and most important thing on many people’s minds is how long it can take to access services: delays in access with waiting times too long, and delays in discharge because appropriate at-home or in-community care is not available.
“The two, of course, are fundamentally connected.
“Both of these delays tell us that the flow of people through the health system is not happening as it should.
“Put more simply – people are not getting the right care in the right place at the right time.
“That is not acceptable to me, it is not acceptable to my Government.”
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