20 Mar 2019
Nearly 100,000 operations have been cancelled since the SNP government started formally recording the incidents three years ago.
Health secretary Jeane Freeman admitted that 97,322 elective procedures had to be rescheduled in that time – the equivalent of 89 a day.
The trend is also increasing, with a rise of 1279 cancelled operations over the past year.
The statistics were published following a parliamentary question from shadow health secretary Miles Briggs.
In her answer, Ms Freeman said: “The decision to cancel an operation is never taken lightly and we continue to work closely with health boards to ensure cancellations are kept to a minimum.”
But the Scottish Conservatives said the “eye-watering” number of cancelled operations exposed the SNP’s incompetent running of the NHS in Scotland.
Scottish Conservative shadow health secretary Miles Briggs said:
“In an organisation the size of the NHS there will always be cancelled procedures, and some of these cancellations will have been unavoidable.
“But the fact nearly 100,000 operations have been scrapped since the SNP decided to record these statistics is eye-watering.
“This will have created massive heartache and inconvenience for thousands of patients and their families.
“It’s more proof that the SNP government simply isn’t up to the task of running Scotland’s NHS.
“Its workforce planning has been shambolic, and that failure has left staff and resources completely over-stretched.
“We need to hear urgently from SNP ministers about how they intend to address this crisis.”
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