This release does not include specific COVID-19 information: visit our COVID-19 webpages for PHS COVID-19 information or the Scottish Government website (external website) for information on COVID-19 in Scotland.

Main points

Outpatients

Outpatient attendances in NHSScotland, for quarters ending December 2017 to December 2022p

Image of a line chart showing a time trend for outpatient attendances for quarters ending December 2017 to December 2022 is shown. The line shows a sharp drop at the beginning of the covid pandemic (quarter ending June 2020), followed by an increase each quarter until June 2021, with levels beyond this remaining fairly constant but still below pre-pandemic levels. In the most recent quarter, outpatient attendances in NHSScotland have increased by 4.7% compared to quarter ending December 2021.

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p - provisional.

​There were just under one million (982,998) outpatient attendances between 1 October and 31 December 2022. Of these, 33% (320,656 attendances) were new cases. The remaining 67% (662,342 attendances) were patients returning for follow-up appointments.​

Inpatients and day cases

There were 241,650 hospital admissions between 1 October and 31 December 2022. Of these, 48% (115,033) were emergency admissions, 10% (24,445) elective (planned) admissions, and 42% (100,865) day cases.

Beds

There were on average 13,695 available staffed beds per day for all acute specialties in the quarter ending 31 December 2022. An available staffed bed is one that is available for inpatient or day case care. For all acute specialties in the quarter ending 31 December 2022, the percentage occupancy was 89%.

Data quality

There are known issues with the quality of data presented. For more information, please see the Data quality and Trend data sections.

Further information

The data for the most recent quarter are provisional. Provisional data are subject to change in future publications, as submissions may be updated to reflect a more accurate and complete set of data from NHS Boards.

The volume of hospital activity and trends observed continue to be impacted post-pandemic and during the recovery phase. For example, inpatient and day case activity and outpatient activity have reduced by 12% and 9%, respectively, when comparing October to December 2022 to the same quarter of 2019 (pre-pandemic). However, activity levels have generally been recovering from July 2020 onwards but are still not up to pre-pandemic levels.

Disclosure control methods have been applied to the data to protect patient confidentiality: therefore, some figures on total counts may not be additive.

Further information on this publication is available on these web pages. Data from this publication are available to download from the Data files and Data explorer sections of our website and from the Scottish Health and Social Care Open Data platform (external website). Supplementary outpatient data are accessible in the COVID Wider Impacts Dashboard (external website).

Information published prior to September 2019 is listed on the Hospital Care publication page (external website). Background information on hospital care can be found in the Hospital Care topic web page (external website).

The next release of this quarterly acute hospital activity & NHS beds publication will be in November 2023.

Publication summary

View the publication summary [217KB, PDF]