TUESDAY, 14 JANUARY, 2020

Immediate release

Health and Care Services coping well this winter

NHS Tayside top performer in UK.

Tayside’s doctors, nurses and other clinical and support staff have been working together to ensure that health and social care services are coping well this winter.

Demands on healthcare over the busy winter period are always high and NHS Tayside has been working closely with Angus, Dundee and Perth & Kinross Health and Social Care Partnerships and other partners to ensure services keep up with the increased demands in services.

One of the areas which is an important indicator of pressure across health services is A&E performance and NHS Tayside and its partners are continuing to work really hard to make sure people attending Emergency Departments are seen as quickly as possible.

All of this hard work has seen the NHS Tayside Emergency Departments emerge consistently exceeding the 95% four-hour target and NHS Tayside as the best performing board in the UK. The latest weekly figure shows that 96.3% of patients were seen within four hours.

The whole NHS Tayside team from Emergency Medicine, the Acute Medical Unit and downstream wards have worked very hard over the recent winter period to provide the care our patients deserve.

This has been further strengthened by the plans which community teams have delivered to prevent people having to be admitted into hospital.

The winter months also results in an increase in the demand on our Out-of-Hours Services in Tayside. Over the past few weeks and including the festive period public holidays, it has been, as expected, an extremely busy time for the service who saw over 4,000 patients. Despite this increase, the teams were able to provide high-quality care to those who contacted the Out of Hours Service and this was due to the hard work and commitment of staff within the service.

NHS Tayside Chief Executive Grant Archibald said, “I am extremely proud that NHS Tayside consistently achieves the four-hour target. This is as a result of the dedicated staff within the Emergency Departments in Perth Royal Infirmary and Ninewells and the wider multi-disciplinary teams right across the organisation and also our colleagues in the Health and Social Care Partnerships, councils and Scottish Ambulance Service.

“NHS Tayside has always performed well against national unscheduled care performance standards and we are all committed to maintaining and striving to improve this performance.

“This year’s Winter Plan details a whole system response to the additional demand. By investing in services and beds, improving access to care and changing the ways in which patients are assessed, admitted and discharged, we are maintaining services and responding to any challenges quickly.

“This means our patients are being seen quickly by the right person in the right place.”

Notes to Editors:

Activity between 23 December 2019 to 5 January 2020

Attendances at Tayside Out of Hours Service - 4,191

Attendances at Emergency Departments - 2,730

Contact:

Anna Michie

NHS Tayside Communications

(01382) 424138