NHS waiting times - stage of treatment
Inpatients, day cases and new outpatients quarter ending 30 June 2024

About this release

This release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) relates to the length of time patients wait to be seen as a new outpatient or admitted for treatment as an inpatient or day case. The latest statistics represent all patients covered by the national standards for these stages of treatment. Please note that individual patients are counted more than once if they are waiting to attend more than one scheduled hospital appointment or admission, so the official statistics shown here and in previous publications do not reflect the actual number of individuals involved. Consequently, figures for the number of ongoing waits of patients waiting for a new outpatient attendance and those waiting for treatment as either an inpatient or day case should not be added together to determine the proportion of the total population waiting for these types of care.

Main points

New outpatient national standard - 95% of new outpatients wait no longer than 12 weeks from referral to being seen.

• During the quarter ending June 2024, 313,784 new outpatient waits were completed when the patient involved was seen at their outpatient clinic. This represents a decrease of 11,324 (-3.5%) attendances from the previous quarter but is 3.5% higher than the same quarter last year.
• Of these waits, 205,524 (65.5%) were completed in 12 weeks or less, up from 199,141 (61.3%) in the previous quarter. However, the number of completed waits over 12 weeks decreased from 125,967 to 108,260 during the same period.
• At 30 June 2024, there were 558,896 patient waits that were still ongoing, an increase of 3.6% (19,466) compared to the end of the previous quarter. The total waiting list size is 7.2% higher than at the end of June 2023 and has increased more than two-fold (302,543) since 31 March 2020, after the onset of the pandemic.
• In July 2022 the Scottish Government (SG) announced new targets to eradicate long waits. In respect of new outpatient appointments, the targets were to eradicate waits over two years (104 weeks) by the end of August 2022, those over 18 months (78 weeks) by the end of December 2022 and those over a year (52 weeks) by the end of March 2023. These targets have yet to be achieved and ongoing waits in all three measures have increased over the last year. At 30 June 2024, in comparison to the previous quarter, there were 58,191 (+11,278) waits that had been ongoing over 52 weeks, 12,331 (+2,962) waits over 78 weeks and 2,024 (+696) over 104 weeks.

Treatment Time Guarantee (TTG) – Following the decision to treat, all eligible patients should wait no longer than 12 weeks for treatment as an inpatient or day case.

• During quarter ending June 2024, 65,106 patient waits under this guarantee ended when the patient involved was admitted as an inpatient or day case for their intended treatment. This represents an increase of 1,005 (+1.6%) admissions from the previous quarter and is 9.9% higher than the same quarter last year. It should be noted that the reported rise in completed waits in from last year is partly due to the inclusion of ophthalmology waits at NHS Golden Jubilee. Excluding this specialty across NHSScotland to draw comparisons over time, completed waits increased by 4.9% from the same period last year.
• Of these waits, 37,997 (58.4%) were completed in 12 weeks or less, up from 36,561 (57%) in the previous quarter. There were 27,109 waits completed after 12 weeks or more, 431 fewer than in the previous quarter.
• At 30 June 2024 there were 155,558 waits for treatment that were still ongoing, a decrease of 0.8% (-1,307) compared to the end of the previous quarter which comes after a slowdown in the growth of the waiting list over the last year. However, the number of ongoing waits is 4% higher than at the same date last year and is more than twice the average at the end of quarters in 2019 (+77,973), prior to when the COVID-19 pandemic began to impact on planned care services.
• New targets to eliminate long waits were announced by the SG in July 2022. In respect of waits for treatment as an inpatient or day case, the targets were to eradicate waits over two years (104 weeks) by the end of September 2022, those over eighteen months (78 weeks) by the end of September 2023 and those over a year (52 weeks) by the end of September 2024. Those targets due to be delivered by now have yet to be achieved. Additionally, ongoing waits in all three measures have increased over the last year. In comparison to the previous quarter there were 7,146 (+22) waits that had been ongoing over 104 weeks at 30 June 2024, and 17,263 waits over 78 weeks represents an increase of 149. In relation to the final target, there are 37,972 waits over 52 weeks, up 3,615 since the announcement and representing 24.4% of the overall list size. It should be noted that of these long waits, 1,324 relate to patients being on the waiting list for more than three years.

Background

Documents relating to waiting times, including the TTG are available via the waiting times section of the website.

These statistics continue to be affected by COVID-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic. 

Further information

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 26 November 2024.

NHS Performs

A selection of information from this publication is included in NHS Performs (external website). NHS Performs is a website that brings together a range of information on how hospitals and NHS boards within NHSScotland are performing.