NHS waiting times - stage of treatment
Inpatients, day cases and new outpatients quarter ending 31 December 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. 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 do not reflect the actual number of individuals involved. The estimates on the number of individuals waiting to be seen at a consultant-led clinic or admitted for treatment that were introduced last quarter to address this issue are not available for the latest quarter end due to local system issues in NHS Ayrshire & Arran. Please, therefore, be reminded that figures for the number of ongoing waits 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 December 2024, 319,400 new outpatient waits were completed when the patient involved was seen at their outpatient clinic. This represents an increase of 4,067 (+1.3%) from the previous quarter and is 1.6% higher than the same quarter in 2023.
• Of these waits, 201,803 (63.2%) were completed in 12 weeks or less, a slight increase of 394 from the previous quarter but a decrease in percentage from 63.9%.
• At 31 December 2024, there were 563,641 waits that were still ongoing, a decrease of 1.9% (-10,758) compared to the end of the previous quarter but 4.9% higher than at the end of December 2023.
• The number of long waits has been on an upward trajectory for almost two years. At 31 December 2024, there were 62,291 waits that had been ongoing for over one year, an increase of 19,684 (+46.2%) compared to 31 December 2023. Of these, 4,655 waits had exceeded two years, up by 3,534 over the same period.

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 the quarter ending December 2024, 63,408 patient waits under this guarantee ended when the patient involved was admitted for their intended treatment. This represents a slight decrease of 92 (-0.1%) from the previous quarter. However, compared to the same period in 2023, the number of admissions has increased by 2%.
• Of these waits, 36,140 (57%) were completed in 12 weeks or less, down from 36,590 (57.6%) in the previous quarter.
• At 31 December 2024 there were 158,240 waits for treatment that were still ongoing, an increase of 1% (+1,637) compared to the end of the previous quarter and 1.4% higher than at the end of December 2023.
• The number of long waits has continued to rise. At 31 December 2024, there were 38,778 waits that had been ongoing for over one year, an increase of 1,444 from the previous year end, accounting for 24.5% of the overall list size. Of these, 7,469 had been ongoing over 2 years and 1,478 over 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 27 May 2025.

PHS is currently undertaking a review of the statistical publications we produce; all planned care waiting times outputs are being reviewed and this may lead to a change in the content, layout and frequency of future publications. Any substantial changes will be announced ahead of implementation. For more information, please contact us at phs.waitingtimes@phs.scot.