NHS Gender Identity Clinics: Waiting Times for First Outpatient Consultation

About this release

The PHS Gender Identity Clinic (GIC) data collection was introduced in April 2023 to collect national data on waiting times for gender identity clinics in Scotland. It focuses on referrals, number of patients seen by a specialist for the first time (and how long they waited), and number of individuals waiting (and length of ongoing wait). This is the first release of these 'Official Statistics in Development' and we welcome feedback via phs.gic@phs.scot.

Main points

Data were submitted by all four adult and one young person clinics in Scotland. As expected in an 'official statistics in development' publication, there are some data quality issues which have affected overall certainty around some of the figures, but not the overall trends. Based on the data and information provided by clinics:

• At least 1,680 referrals were made in 2023/24. Data recording issues with some referrals that were transferred between clinics resulted in an undercount that PHS estimate could be around 120-180 in the year.
• On 31 March 2024 there were 5,640 people waiting on a first outpatient appointment, an increase of 7% from 30th June 2023 (the first time point for which data are available). This included 4,643 adults and 997 young people.

Bar chart showing the number of people waiting for a first outpatient appointment, by length of ongoing wait, at end March 2024. Of the 5,640 people waiting across Scotland, 4,209 (75%) had been waiting up to three years and 1,431 (25%) more than three years.

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Total number of people waiting by length of ongoing wait as of 31st March 2024, NHS Scotland, 2023/24

• At the end of March 2024, 4,209 of the 5,640 (75%) people waiting across Scotland had been waiting for up to 3 years for their initial appointment and the remaining 1,431 (25%) had been waiting for more than 3 years.
• Almost all (98%) of those waiting beyond 3 years were waiting for an appointment at the NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde adult or young person clinic.
  • For the NHS GG&C adult clinic, 510 individuals had been waiting between 3 and 4 years, 601 between 4 and 5 years and 167 more than 5 years.
  • For the young people clinic, 98 individuals had been waiting between 3 and 4 years and 20 between 4 and 5 years.
• Throughout 2023/24, 596 patients had an initial outpatient appointment (completed wait) at an NHS GIC in Scotland. 64% of these took place at NHS Lothian, 23% at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde adult service, 7% at NHS Grampian and 5% at NHS Highland. Less than 2% (10 new appointments in total) took place at the NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde GIC for young people.

Background

With increasing demand and waiting times for NHS Gender Identity Services, the Scottish Government’s Programme for Government for 2021-2022 gave a commitment to improve access to these services. The 'National Gender Identity Healthcare Reference Group' has overseen implementation of the ‘NHS Gender Identity Services: Strategic Action Framework 2022-2024’. This included a commitment to ‘Commission Public Health Scotland (PHS) to establish robust national waiting times data collection and reporting for gender identity services.’ This first report is based on 2023/24 quarterly data collected and analysed in response to this commission. The label 'Official Statistics in development' is applied to statistics that are undergoing development and testing, but are deemed useful to publish to enable users and stakeholders to comment on their development while quality improvement work is ongoing. The limitations that apply to the interpretation of these data are presented in the main report.