Cancelled planned operations
Month Ending 31 March 2023

An Official Statistics publication for Scotland

Published: 02 May 2023
Type: Statistical report
Author: Public Health Scotland

Waiting times

Please note that this publication includes data which have been revised from August 2024 onwards and published for the first time in October 2024. Data were previously submitted for the specialty of obstetrics by several NHS boards in error but they are no longer submitting these data. This change has also been applied to historic data to ensure a comparable time trend; therefore, please treat the figures in this publication with caution. View the most recent publication.

About this release

This release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) provides a monthly update on the number of operations in NHSScotland that were cancelled the day before or the day of treatment. Note that due to technical issues, NHS Lothian have been unable to provide data from November 2022 onwards. These data have also been excluded from NHSScotland totals.

Main points

During March 2023 there were 21,350 operations planned to take place across NHSScotland (excl. NHS Lothian). This represents an increase of 18.2% compared to the 18,069 planned for February 2023 and is 15.2% higher than the number planned a year previously in March 2022.

Total planned operations and percentage of cancelled planned operations, by reason, up to March 2023. — Image caption **Total planned operations and percentage of cancelled planned operations, by reason, up to March 2023**

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, when planned care service capacity was severely impacted, the overall trend for the monthly number of planned operations has been on the rise with the figure reported for the latest month the highest since February 2020. Activity does however remain lower than pre-pandemic levels and when comparing to March 2019, there were 12.3% fewer operations planned during the latest month.
During March 2023, 8.2% of all planned operations were cancelled the day before or on the day the patient was due to be treated for NHSScotland (excl. NHS Lothian). This has decreased slightly from 8.4% during the previous month but remains comparable to pre-pandemic levels (8.1% in March 2019). Across NHS Boards, this percentage ranged from 4% to 11.6%.
Of all cancelled planned operations during March 2023, for NHSScotland (excl. NHS Lothian), 676 (3.2%) were cancelled by the hospital based on clinical reasons, 593 (2.8%) were cancelled by the patient, 420 (2%) were cancelled by the hospital due to capacity or non-clinical reasons, and 70 (0.3%) were cancelled due to other reasons.

Background

These statistics are released monthly. Data for this publication are submitted from NHS board theatre systems. Further information on the reasons for cancellation can be found on the Cancelled Planned Operations section of our website.

These statistics continue to be affected by COVID-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic.

Further information

The next release of this publication will be 6 June 2023.

NHS Performs

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

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Older versions of this publication

Versions of this publication released before 16 March 2020 may be found on the Data and Intelligence, Health Protection Scotland or Improving Health websites.