Nicola Sturgeon wants a more flexible system New system at-a-glance Brian Taylor's blog

Nicola Sturgeon said a more flexible system for hospital appointments will be introduced instead.

Ms Sturgeon said patients will no longer lose their maximum waiting time guarantee if their treatment is of low clinical priority or too specialised.

The existing system has faced accusations that it disguises the true extent of waiting lists.

Ms Sturgeon told MSPs that the waiting time guarantee will not be lost if patients become unavailable for treatment, with the period they are unavailable being taken into account instead.

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Patients who under the present system could lose their guarantee for cancelling an appointment will instead have two opportunities to rearrange those appointments, but may come off the waiting list and be referred back to their GP.

Ms Sturgeon said: "This new SNP government will do in our first year what the last government failed to do in eight years - ensure that hidden waiting lists in our NHS are a thing of the past."

She went on to describe in detail the new system which will replace "availability status codes" (ASCs) in waiting lists from next year.

The codes were introduced in June 2003 and are applied to patients in certain categories, like those who fail to show up for a hospital appointment, who cannot be treated because of medical issues, or whose condition is given a low priority, like tattoo removal.

Giving them ASCs removes them from official waiting list statistics but the SNP argued in opposition that the effect was to create a huge hidden waiting list.

The best way of thinking about the new approach is that each patient will have a personal waiting time clock Nicola Sturgeon Health secretary

Quarterly figures published in August showed the number of people exempt from waiting list guarantees because they had ASCs was 24,927 at the end of June, a fall of nearly 30% on 12 months previously when it was more than 35,000.

Ms Sturgeon said the codes were "difficult to understand, impossible to explain, and deeply unfair to patients.

She added: "The best way of thinking about the new approach is that each patient will have a personal waiting time clock.

"The clock starts when the GP's referral is received by the hospital or when a decision is made to provide treatment.

"The patient must be seen or treated before the clock shows the maximum waiting time. Where a patient is unavailable for treatment, the clock will stop and be restarted when the period of unavailability ends."

'Simply misleading'

Labour health spokeswoman Margaret Curran said previous health minister Andy Kerr had pledged to end the use of ASCs.

She claimed that the method the SNP was using to end the system was in fact the same one Mr Kerr had put forward.

Ms Curran said: "I can understand that the SNP wishes to detract attention away from Labour success in drastically reducing waiting times from the 18 months to 18 weeks."

She insisted that describing ASCs as hidden waiting lists was "simply misleading" - pointing out figures for these were published quarterly.

Tory health spokeswoman Mary Scanlon welcomed the abolition of ASCs.

However, she claimed that scrapping them would lead to "a higher real waiting list" and asked Ms Sturgeon how she would ensure patients were treated "on the basis of clinical need and not political targets".

Liberal Democrat public health spokesman Jamie Stone claimed the new system would place "a huge administrative burden" on the health service.