Allied health professionals – musculoskeletal waiting times in NHSScotland
Quarter ending 31 December 2022

About this release

This release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) provides 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.

This publication includes a revision of statistics for NHS Fife from January 2019 onwards. A revision statement is available.

Main points

During the quarter ending 31 December 2022:

• 68,897 patients were seen at a first outpatient appointment, a decrease of 2.9% compared with the quarter ending 30 September 2022 but an increase of 14.3% compared to the same quarter a year ago (60,253 patients). This level remains 14.8% fewer than the average 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 - December 2022. - a line showing the percentage of patients seen within 4 weeks of referral, by month January 2019 - December 2022.

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

• 51.6% of patients were seen within the target of four weeks of referral, similar to the previous quarter (51.2%) and higher than the average in 2019 (45.3%). Of those patients who experienced longer waits, 6.6% waited 24 weeks or more compared to 6.7% in the previous quarter and 2.2% in 2019.
• There were 88,871 referrals to MSK services, lower than the previous quarter (97,552 referrals), and fewer than the average of 111,345 referrals received in 2019.

At the end of the quarter on 31 December 2022:

• 68,142 patients were waiting to be seen, a decrease of 8.7% compared to 30 September 2022 but 9.5% more than a year ago at 31 December 2021 (62,230 patients). The waiting list is slightly lower than the average at the end of quarters during 2019 (71,788 patients).

Background

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 are sourced from the national waiting times warehouse. NHS Fife from January 2019 onwards has been revised in this release to correct a data quality issue. Data prior to January 2019 are excluded from NHSScotland totals in the data tables. Local aggregate data for NHS Borders (January to 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 20 June 2023.