Shocking human and legal cost of missing targets has been revealed with campaigners laying blame on staffing levels

By Lucy Ashton

Scotland’s troubled NHS has paid out £11 million in compensation to cancer patients whose treatment was delayed.

Health boards have paid large sums of money to dozens of people over the past five years following lengthy waits for lifesaving diagnoses and operations.

A total of £11,442,443 went on at least 49 separate settlements across the last five years. News of massive pay-outs comes as the Scottish Government faces serious questions over failing to meet key cancer waiting time targets.

Brenda Eadie, of NHS Workers United for Scotland, said the shocking new figures showed understaffed hospitals were leading to mistakes and delays in cancer treatment.

She said: “These delays are down to staffing levels, there is no doubt about it, but £11.5 million is a huge number. It could have been avoided if they had only put the budget money where it should have gone in the first place.

“If they had put money into a drive to recruit and retain permanent staff then that list of patients would certainly have been much lower.”

She added: “If the NHS had enough staff to begin with then people wouldn’t have suffered or even died as patients wouldn’t have been kept waiting.

“More people will die as the situation is getting to the point whereby this time next year there will be no NHS Scotland. There is no staff and no budget to employ staff as we’ve already seen with our new nurses not being able to get jobs.”

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, which covers West Dunbartonshire, was next in the league table at £2,832,903 and NHS Grampian were third with £1,125,159. 

Only two health boards – NHS Shetland and NHS Western Isles – were not forced to compensate patients for delayed cancer treatment in the last five years. The total bill for Scotland could be even higher as one large health board, NHS Tayside, did not reveal how much it had paid out.

The most recent Public Health Scotland figures showed that 150,014 people were waiting for eight key diagnostic tests – a rise of 5,750 from the previous quarter. The majority of the tests are to discover if a patient has cancer.

Of those waiting, 47 per cent of patients had exceeded the six-week waiting time standard but for some tests like lower endoscopies, for bowel and colon cancer, 70 per cent waited longer than they should.

Despite government promises to eradicate waits of more than a year, 3327 patients had been waiting more than 52 weeks for tests.

Waiting times for treatment have also been missed in every single health board in Scotland. The most recent figures have been branded “a national disgrace”.

Statistics showed the Scottish Government missed both its 62-day and 31-day targets in the most recent quarter. The 62-day target states patients who are referred with an urgent suspicion of cancer should begin treatment within two months. The target has not been met since 2012.

Just 70.4 per cent of patients were treated within the timescale – a worsening since the last figures were released and 13.3 percentage points worse than the quarter before Covid arrived.

The 31-day target – which says treatment should begin within one month of cancer being detected – was also missed. It has been met only twice in the past two years.

The freedom of information request on cancer pay-outs was put to NHS boards by campaign group Scotland in Union.

Spokesman Alastair Cameron said: “Every instance of compensation being paid to cancer patients reveals a story of personal tragedy and heartbreak.

“Everyone understands that in an organisation the size of the NHS there will always be cases where mistakes are made. But the fact more than £11million has been paid out in the last five years illustrates the scale of the problem.

“NHS staff and patients have repeatedly warned that the health service in Scotland is on its knees. It’s time for ministers to focus more sharply on people’s priorities, including our NHS.”

Labour’s health spokeswoman, Dumbarton MSP  Jackie Baillie said: “This demonstrates why it is so important that NHS Scotland catches up quickly with cancer care.

“If people are not diagnosed early it can lead to worse outcomes. The Scottish Government must not use the excuse of the pandemic to justify the delays that are still happening.

“There is no excuse for delays to still be happening. The SNP need to provide much-needed support for staff to achieve better outcomes for patients.”

Dame Jackie added: “If the NHS has been found liable then it can only mean the outcomes for patients will have been poorer and, in some cases, may have resulted in deaths quicker than should have been the case. This is not the fault of patients presenting later, it is down to failures in processes.

“And this doesn’t even begin to take into account the numbers of those with cancer who listened to public health messages and stayed away from health services when they should have attended.”

Lib-Dem leader Alex Cole-Hamilton accused the Scottish Government of being “asleep at the wheel for so long that the cause is measured out in human lives and suffering.”