Chronic pain waiting times
Quarter ending 31 December 2023

About this release

This release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) reports on the length of time patients waited for a first appointment with a pain management service. These services provide chronic pain assessment and management and are delivered by multi-disciplinary teams.

Main points

• During the quarter ending 31 December 2023, 4,757 patients were referred to a chronic pain clinic, a decrease of 8.9% compared to the previous quarter, when 5,220 patients were referred. A major contributing factor to this decrease is likely to be the regular drop in referral activity during the last week of December due to the festive period. During 2023 there were on average 4,985 patients referred each quarter compared to 4,957 in 2022. This remains lower than in 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, when there were on average 5,197 patients referred per quarter.
• During the same quarter, 2,221 patients were seen at a consultant-led chronic pain clinic. This compares to 2,005 patients in the previous quarter, an increase of 10.8% and to 1,890 patients seen a year earlier in the quarter ending 31 December 2022, an increase of 17.5%. During 2023, 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, these patients are considered as no longer waiting once they take up this offer.
• Of those seen at a consultant-led clinic, 1,124 (50.6%) 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 much longer waits has been increasing. For instance, 35.3% of these patients had waited 25 weeks or more to be seen with 16.8% waiting 52 weeks or more. In comparison, during 2019, 14.3% of patients had waited 25 weeks or more and only 0.3% of patients had waited 52 weeks or more.
• Before the COVID-19 pandemic, there were on average, 4,963 patients waiting at the end of each quarter during 2019. 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. However, at 31 December 2023, 4,687 patients were waiting for their first appointment at a chronic pain clinic, a decrease of 9.3% compared to the previous quarter.
• The proportion of patients who have been waiting longer for their first appointment has increased. During 2019, on average, 33.8% of patients had been waiting 13 weeks or more, compared to 47.5% at the end of the latest quarter. Most of these patients are waiting to be treated in NHS Grampian and NHS Tayside, and have been waiting for 25 weeks or more. Long-term staff vacancies is reported as one of the main factors that has contributed to some patients experiencing longer waits in these Boards.

Trend chart showing data from quarter ending 31 December 2015 to quarter ending 31 December 2023 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 31 December 2023¹

Note 1: Data for NHS Orkney is unavailable for the quarters ending 31 December 2015 to 31 March 2016.

Background

Chronic pain is pain that carries on for longer than 12 weeks despite medication or treatment. Further information 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. After being temporarily paused in March 2020, chronic pain services started to resume in June as part of the planned remobilisation of services. In September 2020, a Framework for Recovery of NHS Pain Management Services was published with further guidance on the resumption and continuation of services.

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 June 2024.