A PATIENT at Crosshouse Hospital's Accident and Emergency department faced a horrendous 84 hour wait for treatment earlier this year.

At First Minister’s Questions on Thursday, Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross revealed statistics given to his party through freedom of information legislation, showing the extended wait for one patient in January this year.

Figures published this week show Scotland’s emergency departments reported their worst waiting times on record, with just 63.5 per cent of people being seen and subsequently admitted or discharged within four hours.

The 84-hour wait is some 21 times longer than the four-hour target set by the Scottish Government for 95 per cent of patients to be seen.

“New information that we’ve uncovered shows just how horrendous waiting times are in Scottish hospitals just now,” Mr Ross said during First Minister’s Questions.

“An FOI response has revealed that one patient at a hospital in Ayrshire had to wait 84 hours for treatment.

“That’s three-and-a-half days. The equivalent of turning up for emergency treatment right now, and not being seen until next week, in the early hours of Monday morning.

“First Minister, is that really what anyone in Scotland should go through in 2022?”

Ms Sturgeon replied: “No, and that is clearly an unacceptable situation, but also an exceptional situation, and I am certainly more than willing to look into the particular circumstances around that.”

The request from the Tories only covered NHS Ayrshire and Arran and NHS Borders, but showed a number of other extremely long waits endured by patients.

The longest wait every month in Ayrshire and Arran has consistently been above 50 hours since October last year, with one person waiting 79 hours and 35 minutes at Crosshouse.

The First Minister and Health Secretary Humza Yousaf were also told to “do their job”, by the leader of Scottish Labour.

“Frankly, people are sick of the same old excuses and this SNP Government is always looking for someone else or something else to blame,” Anas Sarwar said.

“After 15 years in power, after 15 years of running our NHS, how long will the people of Scotland have to wait for you and your Health Secretary to do your job?”

In response, the First Minister said: “We will continue to do our jobs and, ultimately, as always it has been, it is for the people of Scotland to decide whether they want us to continue to do our jobs.”

Dr Crawford McGuffie, medical director, said: "Each patient attending our Emergency Departments (EDs) is triaged on arrival and clinical teams prioritise our patients based on clinical need.

“We are aware that, unfortunately, sometimes patients have waited significantly longer than we would wish and we unreservedly apologise for that.

“Our clinical teams continuously review and manage risk and assess for harm associated with prolonged waits. The patients who are delayed within the system have been assessed and have processes for review that mitigate the risk of these delays.

“I would like to thank patients for their help and understanding as we continue to work under extremely difficult circumstances. If we all work together we can ensure that our Emergency Departments are there to look after those who need them most.”