National drug and alcohol treatment waiting times
1 July – 30 September 2020

About this release

This release by Public Health Scotland reports on the waiting times for people accessing drug and alcohol treatment services between 1 July - 30 September 2020. It contains information on the number of people seen for treatment, types of treatment accessed, and length of time waited.

The Scottish Government set a standard that 90% of people referred for help with their drug or alcohol problem will wait no longer than three weeks for treatment that supports their recovery.

Main points

• Between 1 July - 30 September, 97.2% of the 9,342 people who started their first drug or alcohol treatment waited 3 weeks or less, an increase from the same quarter in the previous year (95.1%), which may be in part attributable to a fall in the number of completed waits during the quarter (10,486 in 1 July - 30 September 2019).

• For the 5,365 people seeking alcohol treatment, 97.3% waited 3 weeks or less. 96.9% of the 3,977 people seeking drug treatment waited 3 weeks or less.
• For the 2,037 people who were still waiting to start drug or alcohol treatment at the end of the quarter, 9.7% had been waiting for more than 5 weeks.
• 0% of the 812 people in prison who started their first drug or alcohol treatment between 1 July - 30 September waited 3 weeks or less.
• The numbers of people whose wait was completed immediately prior to and during the COVID-19 lockdown period reduced by up to half compared with the same period last year. Since then there has been a gradual increase towards the levels in 2019.

Background

It should be noted that the statistics released for this reporting period are in part affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. This is notable from mid-March and in particular, from 23 March when Scotland entered a period of ‘lockdown’. These measures will have affected the number of referrals, service provision, and delivery of treatment.

The data in this publication is a snapshot of a dynamic database. This means that data for previous quarters may not be the same as found in previous publications for the same time period. Updated data for the most recent quarter is provisional and may be revised in future publications.

Further information

Find out more in the full report. The data from this publication is available to download from our web page. Open data is available from the Scottish Health and Social Care open data portal (external website). Other relevant publications can be found on the drugs and alcohol use pages (external website).

The Scottish Public Health Observatory (ScotPHO) provides information on various aspects of drug use in Scotland: ScotPHO drug misuse section (external website).

The next release of this publication will be March 2021.