Maintain pressure on reforms to protect NHSScottish hospitals treating more patients than ever
More people in Scotland are being treated in hospitals than ever before with total of 1.4 million patients seen in 2008-09, 50,000 more than the previous year, official statistics have revealed.
Of the total number, emergencies accounted of the highest number of consultations at 593,000, with 428,000 day cases following closely behind.
Within this group, orthopaedics saw a significant rise in activity, with the number of inpatient cases increasing by 31% from March 2005 to March 2009.
Scottish Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon said: “The Scottish Government has continued to increase investment in orthopaedic services to drive this forward, with £370m dedicated towards this area in the last year alone.”
In all, a total of of 977,000 procedures and operations were carried out on inpatient and day cases. While this is down on the 1.22 million carried out 12 months previously, analysts say the fall can be explained by the fact that it is no longer mandatory to record simple procedures like injections and x-rays.
Elsewhere, the statistics also showed that 4.6 million patients were seen at outpatient clinics, up 2.8% on the previous year.
The number of new outpatients climbed by 5.3% on last year to 1.5 million.
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