NHS Scotland crisis: Callers to be phoned back by NHS 24 in planned changes ahead of winter

The app for the service will also soon be able to tell users where the nearest defibrillator is.

Jim Miller, chief executive of NHS 24, spoke to Holyrood's health committee on Tuesday.

The organisation, which is a specialist health board, reported an underspend of almost £800,000 in the past financial year.

Mr Miller said a significant part of this was "not being able to recruit as quickly as we would like", with particular problems in nursing.

Conservative MSP Dr Sandesh Gulhane said this winter could see the NHS come under even more pressure than last year, and he asked if NHS 24's performance would improve.

Mr Miller said winter was always the most challenging period and the organisation was looking to step up its recruitment.

There will also be "changes to the system itself", he said.

Users could be offered the chance to keep their place in the queue and "get a call back when they are at the top of the queue", he said, rather than having to wait on the line.

Mr Miller said: "That means that they're able to go about their day-to-day business and it also means it's more convenient for them.

"Therefore we would hope there's less chance they would give up and go elsewhere.

"There is a challenge with that – one of the reasons we're cautious about that is that sometimes it can create unintended consequences.

"For example, if when the caller is phoned back they're not there."

NHS 24's recently-introduced app has been "tremendously interesting and useful for people", he said, with a defibrillator location feature planned for the next few weeks.

The mooted changes come as fresh figures showed the number of patients waiting 12 hours or more in accident and emergency (A&E) had increased again, after falling for three weeks in a row.

The latest figures show 729 patients spent 12 hours or more in hospital emergency departments in the week ending June 11 – up from 640 the previous week.

Of the 27,292 patients who attended A&E in the latest week, almost seven out of ten (69.6 per cent) were seen and either admitted, transferred or discharged within the four-hour target time.

That is up slightly from 69.2 per cent the previous week – but is still well below the Scottish Government’s ambition of having 95 per cent of patients dealt with within four hours.

The latest data from Public Health Scotland also shows there were 2,283 patients who waited eight hours or more in A&E – up from 2,028 the previous week.

Dr Gulhane said: “These appalling figures make it clear that Humza Yousaf’s disastrous tenure as health secretary is continuing to have a devastating impact on our A&E departments.”

Labour’s health spokeswoman Dame Jackie Baillie said: “We hoped that a new health secretary might help end the crisis in our NHS, but we are still no closer to fixing the chaos in our A&E.

“Patients and staff are both struggling under these conditions and this crisis cannot be allowed to continue any longer.”