IVF waiting times in Scotland
Quarter ending 31 March 2024

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.

In this release, some previously published statistics for the Dundee and Edinburgh IVF Centres have changed. Data is revised from January 2021 onwards for the Dundee IVF Centre following the identification of data recording errors and for the Edinburgh IVF Centre following the removal of duplicate records.

Fully comprehensive data for the Glasgow IVF Centre continues to be unavailable because the process for recording referrals impacts the timely recording of adding patients to their waiting list resulting in an eight-month data lag. PHS can report on the number of patients screened and performance against the waiting time standard, for both the Glasgow IVF Centre and Scotland for the period January 2016 to March 2024. Constraints remain on the reporting of the other metrics for the full time series.

Main points

• During the quarter ending 31 March 2024, 330 patients attended a screening appointment. The 90% standard was met, with all patients attending a screening appointment within 52 weeks of referral.
• By the end of 2020, the number of patients screened had returned to pre-pandemic levels and remained at this level during 2021 (366 patients screened on average each quarter). Since then, there have been some fluctuations in the quarters to the end of March 2024 with an overall quarterly average of 360 in both 2022 and 2023. Screening levels in the quarter ending 31 March 2024 are 10% lower than prior to the pandemic.
• Most patients screened attended a screening appointment at the Glasgow IVF Centre (53.9%). Of the remainder, 20.9% attended screening appointments at the Edinburgh Centre, 18.2% at the Aberdeen Centre and 7.0% at the Dundee Centre.

A stacked bar chart showing the distribution of waiting times for patients who were screened for IVF treatment, by quarter January 2018 to March 2024. 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 quarter ending March 2024, 111 patients waited between 0 and13 weeks to be screened, 114 patients waited between 14 and 26 weeks, 98 patients waited between 27 and 39 weeks, 7 patients waited between 40 and 52 weeks and 0 patients waited over 52 weeks. In comparison during quarter ending March 2018, 81 patients waited between 0 and 13 weeks to be screened, 224 patients waited between 14 and 26 weeks, 68 patients waited between 27 and 39 weeks, 4 patients waited between 40 and 52 weeks and 0 patients waited over 52 weeks.

Close

Number of patients screened in each time band across Scotland, January 2018 to March 2024.

• The number of patients waiting across Scotland at 31 March 2024 is unavailable. At 31 July 2023 (the most recent time point for which complete data are available), 941 patients were waiting to be screened, 28.7% higher than the monthly average of 2019. There has been some fluctuation in this number since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic but from December 2020, it has remained higher than was observed during 2019.

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 and transfer of fresh embryos, followed by freezing of suitable embryos and subsequent replacement of these provided the couple still fulfil the access criteria.

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

Further information

Data from this publication are available from the publication page on our website.

Open data from this publication is available from the Scottish Health and Social Care Open Data platform.

The next release of this publication will be 27 August 2024.