Chronic pain waiting times
Quarter ending 30 September 2024

About this release

This release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) reports on the number of referrals to a pain management service, the length of time patients waited to be seen at a first outpatient appointment, the number of patients waiting at the end of the quarter and the length of their wait. These services provide chronic pain assessment and management and are delivered by multi-disciplinary teams. Chronic pain is pain that carries on for longer than 12 weeks despite medication or treatment.

Main points

• During the quarter ending 30 September 2024, 5,315 patients were referred to a consultant-led chronic pain clinic. This is an increase of 2.8% compared to the previous quarter, when 5,170 patients were referred. Referrals to a chronic pain clinic are now higher than during 2023, when on average 4,990 patients were referred each quarter. Referrals are also higher than the levels seen prior to the COVID-19 pandemic when on average 5,197 patients were referred each quarter during 2019.
• During the same quarter, 1,986 patients were seen at a chronic pain clinic. This compares to 1,844 patients in the previous quarter, an increase of 7.7% and to 2,005 patients seen a year earlier in the quarter ending 30 September 2023, a decrease of 0.9%. During the last year, from the quarter ending 31 December 2023 to the quarter ending 30 September 2024, an average of just over 2,000 patients were seen each quarter which is lower than prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, when an average of just under 3,000 patients were seen per quarter during 2019. This is largely due to some NHS Boards introducing new pathways that offer some patients alternatives to being seen by a consultant. In these statistics, patients are considered as no longer waiting once they take up this offer.
• Of those seen at a consultant-led clinic in the latest quarter, 1,042 (52.5%) had waited 12 weeks or less to be seen, which is similar to the experience of patients seen in 2019. However, the proportion of patients who had experienced longer waits has increased. For instance, 34.6% of these patients had waited 25 weeks or more to be seen and of this, 7.8% had waited 52 weeks or more. In comparison, during 2019, 14.3% of patients had waited 25 weeks or more and of this, only 0.3% of patients had waited 52 weeks or more.
• On 30 September 2024, 5,377 patients were waiting for their first appointment at a chronic pain clinic. This is an increase of 8.2% compared to 30 June 2024, when there were 4,971 patients waiting. During 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic began to impact services, there were on average, 4,963 patients waiting at the end of each quarter. When services were impacted, the waiting list reduced significantly to 2,375, due largely to reduced referrals in the period April 2020 to March 2021. The trend since then has generally been upwards.
• Of those waiting to be seen at the end of each quarter, the proportion of patients who had been waiting for longer has increased. During 2019, on average, 33.8% of patients had already been waiting 13 weeks or more at the end of each quarter, compared to 49.1% at 30 September 2024. Most of these patients were waiting to be treated in NHS Ayrshire & Arran, NHS Dumfries & Galloway, NHS Grampian, NHS Lanarkshire and NHS Tayside. Staffing issues is reported as the main factors that have contributed to some patients experiencing longer waits in these Boards.

Trend chart showing data from quarter ending 31 December 2015 to quarter ending 30 September 2024 with bars showing the number of patients waiting per quarter. Each bar is broken down by the length of time patients have been waiting: 12 weeks or less (darker blue bar), 13 - 24 weeks (blue bar), 25 - 51 weeks (paler blue bar), and 52+ weeks (grey bar).

Close

Distribution of wait for patients waiting at a consultant-led Chronic Pain clinic from quarter ending 31 December 2015 to 30 September 2024¹

Note 1: Data for NHS Orkney is unavailable for the quarters ending 31/12/2015 to 31/03/2016.

Background

Further information on chronic pain can be found on the NHS Inform website. The data presented here have been adjusted for periods of patient unavailability. Any adjustments are based on the NHSScotland Waiting Times Guidance. For the NHS Boards who submit data on pain psychology clinics, further detail is available in the data tables and the publication report.

Further information

The next release of this publication will be 11 March 2025.