NHS waiting times - stage of treatment
Inpatients, day cases and new outpatients quarter ending 31 March 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 March 2024, 324,553 new outpatient waits were completed when the patient involved was seen at their outpatient clinic, the highest number of attendances in a quarter since the onset of the pandemic. This represents an increase of 9,542 (+3%) attendances from the previous quarter and is 2.5% higher than the same quarter last year.
• Of these waits, 198,751 (61.2%) were completed in 12 weeks or less, compared to 195,524 (62.1%) in the previous quarter. The number of completed waits over 12 weeks increased from 119,487 to 125,802 during the same period.
• At 31 March 2024, there were 534,178 patient waits that were still ongoing, an increase of 0.9% (4,639) compared to the end of the previous quarter. The total waiting list size is 10% higher than at the end of March 2023 and has increased more than two-fold (+277,831) 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 while the number of waits ongoing over 104 weeks has decreased to 1,302 (-1,486) since the end of June 2022, there have been increases in waits ongoing over 78 weeks to 9,293 (+400) and waits over 52 weeks to 46,828 (+11,173) since that date. The number of ongoing waits across all three of these measures have increased in the latest quarter.

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 March 2024, 63,900 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 1,748 (+2.8%) admissions from the previous quarter and is 10.8% higher than the same quarter last year. It should be noted that the reported rise in completed waits in this quarter is partly due to the inclusion of ophthalmology waits at Golden Jubilee University National Hospital. Excluding this specialty across NHSScotland to draw comparisons over time, completed waits increased by 1.4% from the previous quarter and by 7.1% from the same period last year.
• Of these waits, 36,425 (57%) were completed in 12 weeks or less, compared to 35,842 (57.7%) in the previous quarter. There were 27,475 waits over 12 weeks, 1,165 more than in the previous quarter.
• At 31 March 2024 there were 156,108 waits for treatment that were still ongoing, a decrease of -0.2% (-337) compared to the end of the previous quarter. Although minor, this is the first time the waiting list size has decreased between quarters since quarter ending 31 December 2020. However, the number of ongoing waits is 5.8% higher than at the same date last year and is more than twice the average at the end of quarters in 2019 (+78,523), 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. Although some improvement has been made since their announcement 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 7,140 (+42) waits that had been ongoing over 104 weeks at 31 March 2024, whilst 17,178 waits over 78 weeks represents a reduction of 535. In relation to the final target, there are 37,761 waits over 52 weeks, up 3,388 since the announcement and representing 24.2% of the overall list size. It should be noted that of these long waits, 1,369 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 27 August 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.