Cancelled planned operations
Month ending 31 May 2023

An Official Statistics publication for Scotland

Published: 04 July 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 on the day of treatment. Note that due to technical issues, NHS Lothian have been unable to provide data from November 2022 to March 2023. However, they have recommenced from April 2023 onwards. This should be taken into consideration when interpreting the statistics shown.

R: 06/07/2023: The final bullet point has been amended to ensure that our statistics are not misleading or open to misinterpretation.

Main points

During May 2023, there were 24,125 operations planned to take place across NHSScotland. This represents an increase of 21.6% compared to the 19,840 planned for April 2023 and is 10.2% higher than the number planned a year previously in May 2022 (21,895).
The trend for the monthly number of planned operations has generally been on the rise since May 2020 and the 24,125 reported in the latest month is the highest recorded since February 2020 (27,645). However, activity still remains lower than pre-pandemic levels and when comparing to May 2019 (29,672), there were 18.7% fewer operations planned during the latest month.
During the latest month, 8.3% (2,003) planned operations were cancelled the day before or on the day the patient was due to be treated, for NHSScotland. This has decreased slightly from 8.7% (1,733) reported during the previous month but remains comparable to pre-pandemic levels (8.3% in May 2019). Across NHS Boards, this percentage ranged from 5% to 12.1%.
Of all planned operations during May 2023, for NHSScotland, 734 (3%) were cancelled by the hospital based on clinical reasons, 730 (3%) were cancelled by the patient, 475 (2%) were cancelled by the hospital due to capacity or non-clinical reasons, and 64 (0.3%) were cancelled due to other reasons.

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

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.

Further information

The next release of this publication will be 1 August 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.