Cancelled planned operations
Month ending 31 March 2020

About this release

This release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) provides a monthly update on the number of patients in NHSScotland who have had their planned hospital operation cancelled the day before, or on the day of their planned operation and the reason for this cancellation.

Main points

• The total number of planned operations across NHSScotland during March 2020 was 20,192, a decrease of 31.9% from 29,646 during March 2019.
• 3,019 operations (15.0% of all planned operations) were cancelled in March 2020, ranging from 7.1% to 34.0% across individual NHS Boards. This compares to 2,505 (8.4%) in March 2019.
• In March 2020, of all planned operations:
  • 4.1% were cancelled by the patient
  • 4.4% were cancelled by the hospital based on clinical reasons
  • 5.9% were cancelled by the hospital due to capacity or non-clinical reasons
  • 0.6% were cancelled due to other reasons.
• The decrease in number of planned operations and increase in Non-clinical/Capacity cancellations is related to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background

These statistics are released monthly. Data for this publication are submitted from NHS board theatre systems.

The below definitions are used for the cancellation reason groupings:

• Cancellation based on clinical reason by hospital includes patient unwell, patient not prepared for procedure correctly by hospital and patient did not follow pre op instruction
• Cancellation based on capacity or non-clinical reason by hospital includes no beds available, staff not available, equipment not available and theatre session overran
• Cancellation by patient includes patient decides not to go ahead with procedure, patient unable to attend, patient did not attend and patient did not attend pre-op
• Other includes fire alarm prevents operation from taking place, weather prevented patient / staff travelling and patient transport did not arrive in time to bring patient to hospital.

Further information

Data from this publication is available to download from the data files section at the top of this page. Open data is available from the Scottish Health and Social Care Open Data platform (external website).

For more information on cancelled planned operations see the cancelled planned operations section. For related topics, please see the waiting times pages on the Data and Intelligence website (external website).

The next release of this publication will be June 2020.

NHS Performs

A selection of information from this publication is included in NHS Performs. NHS Performs (external website) is a website that brings together a range of information on how hospitals and NHS Boards within NHSScotland are performing.