IVF waiting times in Scotland
Quarter ending 30 June 2023

About this release

This release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) provides an update on how long eligible patients waited from referral to a screening appointment for in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment by the NHS in Scotland. The standard is for 90% of eligible patients to be screened at an IVF Centre within 52 weeks of receipt of a referral from a secondary care/acute consultant.

The statistics available in this release continue to be constrained by the availability of quality assured data from the Glasgow IVF Centre. Prior to the last release, issues were identified with some aspects of data previously submitted by this IVF Centre. Progress has been made to address these issues and as a result, some previously published statistics have changed. In this release PHS can report on the number of patients screened and performance against the waiting time standard, for both the Glasgow IVF Centre and Scotland as whole for the period January 2018 to June 2023. However, there are constraints to being able to report on the full time series for other metrics normally available from the dataset - see main report for more details. A full dataset is published for the 3 other IVF Centres.

Main points

During the quarter ending 30 June 2023:

• the 90% standard was met, with 99.7% of patients attending a screening appointment within 52 weeks of referral. One patient waited more than 52 weeks to be screened.
• 372 patients attended an IVF screening appointment, an increase of 14.5% compared to the previous quarter. The average number of patients screened in each month of the quarter (124) is similar to the average in 2019, prior to the pandemic and also the average from January 2021 onwards.
• 50.2% of patients waited 26 weeks or less to be screened, a similar proportion to the previous quarter. However, the proportion of patients who experienced a longer wait of 40 weeks or more increased from 2.5% to 7.8%.

A stacked bar chart showing the distribution of waiting times for patients who were screened for IVF treatment, by month January 2018 to June 2023. The time bands shown are 0-13 Weeks, 14-26 Weeks, 27-39 Weeks, 40-52 Weeks and over 52 Weeks. At the end of the reporting period during June 2023 29 patients waited 0-13 weeks to be screened, 41 waited 14-26 weeks, 59 waited 27-39 weeks, 6 waited 40-52 weeks and 1 patient waited over 52 weeks. In comparison during January 2018 39 patients waited 0-13 weeks to be screened, 65 waited 14-26 weeks, 33 waited 27-39 weeks, 1 waited 40-52 weeks and 0 waited over 52 weeks.

Close

Number and distribution of wait for patients screened across Scotland, January 2018 to June 2023

Background

IVF is an effective method of assisted reproductive technology used to treat infertility.  This includes intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) for male infertility. Where this publication refers to IVF, it includes IVF and ICSI. One full cycle of IVF includes ovulation induction, egg retrieval, fertilisation, transfer of fresh embryos, followed by freezing of suitable embryos and subsequent replacement of these provided the couple still fulfil the access criteria.

Each of the 14 territorial NHS Boards in Scotland commissions cycles of IVF from one of the four specialist tertiary Centres providing NHS treatment (Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow).

Further information

The next release of this publication will be 29 August 2023.