Out of hours primary care services in Scotland
January 2017 to January 2025

About this release

This release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) provides new figures on Primary Care Out of Hours (PC OOH) services up to 10 January 2025. Trend data includes COVID-19 Hub/ Assessment centre activity from March 2020 to March 2022, as this was managed by the PC OOH services in the out of hours period. Accident and Emergency (A&E) attendances during the out of hours period are also presented up to December 2024. In previous publications A&E data included only unplanned attendances. The current publication includes new planned A&E activity introduced as part of the Redesign of Urgent Care in December 2020, to align with changes to PHS A&E statistics. Further information on the new planned activity can be found here. PC OOH data is missing for August - September 2022 due to a system outage.  

Main points

• In December 2024, there were around 91,900 consultations at PC OOH services, a decrease (down by 15%) compared to December 2023. This decrease is likely to be due to four day closure of in hours services around the public holidays in December 2023 (Christmas day was on a Monday in 2023). The number of A&E attendances, both unplanned and new planned, in the out of hours period has fallen very slightly (0.1%).
• Thursday 2nd January 2025 was the busiest day over the festive period with around 7,350 PC OOH consultations. Over a typical weekend there are around 5,600 PC OOH consultations per day.

This chart shows trend data for Primary Care Out of Hours activity in the Out of Hours period and A&E activity as well. The trend looks at data from January 2017 up to December 2024

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Trends in Out of Hours Primary Care and A&E activity

• The relationship between A&E attendances and PC OOH activity changed during the pandemic and this persisted until early 2024. It showed a higher ratio of PC OOH consultations to unplanned A&E attendances compared to historical patterns (Jan 2017 – Feb 2020). This may have reflected changes to patient pathways introduced by the Redesign of Urgent Care in December 2020, although the impacts of this are not yet fully understood. More recent trend data appears similar to pre-pandemic patterns.
• The number of consultations per case rose during the COVID-19 pandemic which was driven by a higher use of telephone consultations. This fell after the COVID-19 community pathway was closed at the end of March 2022 and continued to fall from June 2022 when a more accurate method of identifying cases was introduced. Further information on cases and consultations can be found in the glossary.
• Pre pandemic, the majority (around 60%) of consultations took place face-to-face in a Primary Care Emergency Centre (PCEC) and around 20% were home visits. For the month of December 2024, only 38% of consultations were in a PCEC, 9% were home visits and 44% were by telephone.

Background

From April 2014, data on activity at PC OOH services for each NHS Board in Scotland have been submitted to PHS by an external system supplier. PHS processes these extracts and maintains the national data warehouse. The OOH period for this publication includes 6pm - 8am, weekends and Easter, Christmas and New Year public holidays. Between March 2020 and the end of March 2022 people calling NHS 24 with the main symptoms of COVID-19 were managed via a dedicated pathway. Patient consultations are recorded as an attendance at Primary Care Emergency Centres (PCEC), Home Visits and/or PC OOH telephone/video advice.

The definition of a ‘case’ and how it should be recorded has changed over time and varies by board. The Scottish Government is continuing to work with the system supplier and boards to standardise recording.  We therefore recommend the use of figures on ‘consultations’, rather than ‘cases’, for meaningful trend analysis or comparisons between areas. 

A&E data presented in this publication is contained in the national A&E datamart. Further information on data on PC OOH services can be found on the metadata section of the web pages.

Further information

The next release of this publication will be 4 March 2025.