More people are waiting too long for crucial diagnoses in NHS Grampian than in any other part of Scotland, a report has found.
The latest official figures, released yesterday, show the troubled north-east health board met the 18-week “referral to treatment” target in just 83.7% of cases in March.
The rate is down from 84.1% in February and has been steadily declining since December.
NHS Grampian has only met the target for one month in the last year.
The latest statistics from NHS Scotland have prompted fresh demands for action to tackle staff shortages.
Last night, north-east Labour MSP Richard Baker urged the Scottish Government to free up funds for the health board as a matter of urgency.
He said: “Yet again – despite the best efforts of our committed health staff locally – NHS Grampian have failed to meet waiting times targets for referral to treatment.
“All the staff are going above the call of duty but there are not enough of them.
“There is a recruitment crisis, we have the highest number of vacancies of any health board in Scotland and we are lagging behind.
“It is clear that more Scottish Government support is needed and it is clear that it is needed now.”
Chairman of the Patients Action Co-ordination Group (PACT) Jamie Weir backed his call for increased funding.
He said: “The problems go back to staffing levels, this is a long-term problem.
“We don’t have the staff to meet the needs of the population – if you’re operating with 80% of the required staff there will be waiting lists.
“Funding needs to be brought into parity with other NHS boards in Scotland.”
Health Secretary Shona Robison defended the Scottish Government’s commitment to funding NHS Grampian.
She said: “Last winter was extremely challenging for our health boards, and this government acknowledges that more must be done to maintain and improve on performance in order to meet the rightly demanding targets we have set.
“NHS Grampian’s share of national NHS funding has increased from 9.1% to 9.7% under this government, and for 2015/16 we have committed a further £51.8million to the board.”
A spokeswoman for NHS Grampian said: “We acknowledge we are one of six NHS boards below the performance standard for RTT and we are implementing more robust performance management arrangements and planning to facilitate improvement in compliance with the target and reduce the length of time our patients wait for treatment.”