Hospital casualty departments across northern Scotland have dealt with significant extra demand caused by wintry weather.
Icy roads and pavements have led to a surge in patients visiting accident and emergency departments for treatment for injuries caused by slips and falls.
And with the Met Office issuing a yellow weather warning for ice covering a large part of the north west and north east, there could still be more misery to come.
The warning will remain in place until 11am today with wintry showers expected to ease from the afternoon.
A Met Office spokesman said: “Some injuries from slips and falls on icy surfaces are possible.”
New figures have revealed that the performance of Scotland’s accident and emergency departments dropped again amid a surge in demand in December.
The latest figures for the week ending December 17 show that 81.1% of patients were seen and either admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours, falling significantly short of the Scottish Government’s 95% target.
This represents a drop from 86.9% the previous week, and is down from 90.2% in the same week last year.
The statistics show there were 29,054 attendances at emergency departments across Scotland during the week – the highest number since weekly reporting began in 2015.
Hospital visits were up 12% on the previous week, and up 15% on the same week last year, with much of the increase in numbers attributed to weather-related slips and trips as well as seasonal illness.
Raigmore Hospital in Inverness had a 48% increase with 42% more patients attending at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary between Thursday December 14 and Sunday 17, compared with the same few days in the previous week.
The Scottish Ambulance Service also recorded a 40% increase in calls relating to trauma injuries during the same week with a 60% increase in reports of falls that weekend.
Health Secretary Shona Robison said A&E units were dealing with significant extra demand in December.
She said: “Despite record numbers of people attending Scotland’s A&E departments – up 3,200 or 12% in just one week – A&E performance fell by a few percentage points.
“We are not complacent and are doing everything possible to improve that.
“Our additional £22.4million to deal with pressures this year is being invested into additional clinical and non-clinical staff to create extra resilience and maintain weekend and festive period patient discharges, so that there is sufficient capacity across the system.”
