Allied health professionals – musculoskeletal waiting times in NHSScotland
Quarter ending 30 September 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. NHS Fife data have been excluded from NHSScotland totals because of a data quality issue.

Main points

During the quarter ending 30 September 2022:

• 66,163 patients were seen at a first outpatient appointment, an increase of 7.1% compared with the quarter ending 30 June 2022 and of 14.5% from a year ago (57,779 patients). This level remains 14.2% fewer than the average during 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 - September 2022. - a line showing the percentage of patients seen within 4 weeks of referral, by month January 2019 - September 2022.

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

• 51.4% of patients were seen within the target of four weeks of referral, higher than both the previous quarter (50.6%) and the average in 2019 (45.2%). Of those patients who experienced longer waits 7.1% waited 24 weeks or more compared to 11.4% in the previous quarter and 2.3% in 2019.
• 89,269 patients were referred to MSK services, a similar level to the previous quarter (89,585 referrals), but still fewer than the average of 105,334 referrals received in 2019.
• There were 69,749 patients waiting, a slightly higher level to the average at the end of quarters during 2019 prior to the onset of the pandemic (68,449 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 Physiotherapy, Occupational Therapy, Chiropody/Podiatry and Orthotics services. It also covered the NHS24 Musculoskeletal Advice and Triage Service (MATS) service from May 2017 until March 2020.

AHP MSK data is sourced from the national waiting times warehouse. NHS Fife data have been excluded from NHSScotland totals because of a data quality issue. Local aggregate data for NHS Borders (January - September 2020) are included as their data remains affected by a software problem with their TrakCare PMS. Data gaps and data drawn from a number of sources should be taken into consideration when interpreting the statistics.

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 21 March 2023.