The performance of the accident-and-emergency (A&E) department at Scotland’s new flagship hospital is not as good as ministers expected, Nicola Sturgeon has conceded.
But the First Minister insisted it was not appropriate to describe the A&E department at the £842 million South Glasgow University Hospital as a “warzone”.
The latest figures show staff at the facility treated 78.3% of people in A&E inside four hours – the worst performance at any hospital in Scotland and well below the Scottish Government target of 98%.
An expert team has now been sent in to help and Ms Sturgeon insisted there were always going to be “initial challenges” with transferring services from three hospitals to the new site.
Scottish Labour acting leader Iain Gray pressed her on the issue at First Minister’s Questions in Holyrood, saying across Scotland the Government had failed to meet its A&E waiting-time target for 296 weeks in a row.
“If there’s one place where we might expect that target to be met, it is in the new Glasgow hospital,” he said.
“It just seems obvious that if we spend £850 million on a brand new hospital it should be the best in Scotland.
“But this new hospital has the worst accident-and-emergency waiting times in the country, and they’re getting worse.
“This is a hospital opened with great fanfare just two months ago and now it is being described as a warzone.”
The SNP leader told him: “The term warzone is not an appropriate term to use about any of our hospitals and I would hope Iain Gray would reflect seriously on his choice of words there.”
Mr Gray, a previous Scottish Labour leader, said: “Frankly, the First Minister is damn right calling a new hospital a warzone is not appropriate.
“So, she should ask herself why it is that staff and patients in that hospital have had to say that.
“We do know less than two months after it opened an expert team has been sent in to rescue the A&E situation at that new hospital. That is not a good thing.”