Allied health professionals – musculoskeletal waiting times in NHSScotland
Quarter ending 30 June 2022

About this release

This release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) contains an update on how long patients wait for a first outpatient appointment at Allied Health Professional (AHP) led Musculoskeletal (MSK) services. The Scottish Government has determined that at least 90% of patients should wait no longer than four weeks to be seen from receipt of referral.

Main points

During the quarter ending 30 June 2022:

• 65,750 patients were seen at a first outpatient appointment at an AHP-led clinic for MSK conditions, an increase of 15.4% compared with the quarter ending 31 March 2022 and 10.2% from the same quarter a year ago (59,689 patients). This level remains 18.7% fewer than the average seen during quarters of 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

A chart presenting AHP MSK patient seen information with: - columns showing the number of patients seen per month, January 2019 - June 2022. - a line showing the percentage of patients seen within 4 weeks of referral, by month January 2019 - June 2022.

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Patients seen and proportion within 4 weeks, January 2019 - June 2022

• 50.4% of patients were seen within the target of four weeks of referral, lower than the previous quarter (54.7%), but higher than 45.3% of patients on average in 2019. Of those patients who experienced longer waits, 10.8% waited 24 weeks or more to attend an appointment, higher than both the previous quarter (6.7%) and in 2019 (2.2%).
• 95,833 patients were referred to MSK services, an increase of 9.0% compared with the previous quarter but still fewer than the average of 111,364 referrals received in 2019.
• There were 75,887 patients waiting, a slightly higher level to the average at the end of quarters during 2019 prior to the onset of the pandemic (71,915 patients)

Background

The statistics presented in this release are affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has changed referral and treatment patterns within these services.

The AHP MSK data collection covers services for Physiotherapy, Occupational Therapy, Chiropody/Podiatry and Orthotics. It also covered the NHS 24 Musculoskeletal Advice and Triage Service (MATS) service from May 2017 until March 2020. This service is no longer operating with elements of the service superseded across different NHS Boards.

AHP MSK data is sourced from the national waiting times warehouse with the following exceptions for this release: Local aggregate data for January - September 2020 are included for NHS Borders as their data remains affected by a software problem with their Patient Management System (PMS); NHS Western Isles Occupational Therapy data have been excluded as national reporting is not supported by the Morse PMS; NHS Fife provided local aggregate Chiropody/Podiatry data as a result of technical issues submitting data from the TIARA system.

The waiting time used for this target is an adjusted waiting time, with adjustments made up to 4 weeks based on the NHSScotland Waiting Times Guidance.

Further information

The next release of this publication will be 20 December 2022.