Waiting times for pain management services
Quarter ending 31 March 2026

About this release

This quarterly release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) presents statistics on waiting times for pain management services in NHS Scotland. It includes statistics on the number of referrals to these services, the number of patients seen at a first outpatient appointment, the length of their wait before being seen, the number of patients who were still waiting to be seen at the end of the quarter and how long they had been waiting. These services provide chronic pain assessment and management and are delivered by multi-disciplinary teams.

The way in which pain management services are delivered has changed in recent years, from a focus on outpatient appointments at consultant-led clinics to a more multi-disciplinary approach to help patients manage their chronic pain. This third release of statistics from the new extended data collection, containing data from January 2024, includes all first appointments with pain management services (medic, that is a consultant or doctor, physiotherapist, nurse, multi-disciplinary team and information session) to reflect the alternative pathways now on offer to patients. Definitions are available in the Glossary in the main report.

Main points

• During the quarter ending 31 March 2026, 5,832 patients were referred to a pain management service. This compares to 5,657 referrals in the previous quarter, an increase of 3.1% and to 5,692 a year ago in the quarter ending 31 March 2025, an increase of 2.5%.
• In the same quarter, 2,770 patients attended their first outpatient appointment with a pain management service. This compares to 2,949 patients in the previous quarter, a decrease of 6.1% and to 2,883 patients seen a year earlier in the quarter ending 31 March 2025, a decrease of 3.9%. Note that the higher number of patients seen in recent quarters, particularly in the quarter ending 30 September 2025 (3,510) is because boards were working towards the Scottish Government's commitment set out the in NHS Scotland operational improvement plan (OIP), that by the end of March 2026 no patient should wait longer than a year for their new outpatient appointment, inpatient or day case procedure.
• Of those seen at a pain management service in the latest quarter, 49.3% of patients waited 12 weeks or less to be seen, compared to a quarterly average of 55.2% in 2025 and 57.9% in 2024. The proportion of patients who experienced a wait of 52 weeks or more has decreased when compared to both the quarterly average of 2025 and 2024. In the latest quarter, this proportion was 4.4%, compared to an average each quarter of 12.1% in 2025 and 6.2% in 2024.
• In the quarter ending 31 March 2026, 27.7% of patients attended a pain early information session as their first appointment, 42.7% saw a medic, 12.7% saw a physiotherapist, 3.5% saw a nurse, 0.6% attended a multi-disciplinary team clinic and 12.7% were seen by another type of clinician.

Trend chart showing data from quarter ending 31 March 2024 to quarter ending 31 March 2026 with bars showing the number of patients seen per quarter. Each bar is broken down by the type of clinician seen: Pain Early Information session (dark blue bar), Medic (pale blue bar), Physiotherapist (dark grey bar), Nurse (pale grey bar), MDT clinic (dark magenta bar) and Other (pale magenta bar).

Close

Number of patients seen for a first appointment at a pain management service by type of clinician from the quarter ending 31 March 2024 to the quarter ending 31 March 2026

• On 31 March 2026, 6,894 patients were waiting for their first appointment at a pain management service. This is an increase of 9.9% compared to the previous quarter, when there were 6,275 patients waiting and an increase of 3.1% compared to a year ago on 31 March 2025, when there were 6,685 patients waiting.
• The proportion of patients who had been waiting 52 weeks or more at the end of each quarter has decreased. At 31 March 2026, 2.3% of patients had already been waiting 52 weeks or more, compared to a quarterly average of 4.9% in 2025 and 6.7% in 2024. In the most recent quarter, 39 out of 157 of these patients were waiting to be treated in NHS Grampian and 114 out of 157 patients were waiting in NHS Tayside, where staff vacancies and staff absence are reported as factors that have contributed to some patients experiencing longer waits.
• Of those patients waiting on 31 March 2026, 10.2% were waiting to be triaged to the waiting list for the most appropriate clinician, 17.8% were waiting for a pain early information session, 46.1% for a medic, 8.5% for a physiotherapist, 4.6% for a nurse, 0.2% for a multi-disciplinary team clinic and 12.7% were waiting for another type of clinician for their first appointment.

Background

Chronic pain is defined as pain that carries on for longer than 12 weeks despite medication or treatment. Further information on chronic pain can be found on the NHS Inform website.

Statistics on the length of wait in this publication are reported against the national 12 week new outpatient standard. This was agreed at the Pain Management Task Force meeting in December 2024.

Data presented here have been adjusted for periods of patient unavailability and non-attendance.  National guidance sets out the rules associated with calculation of adjustments for waiting times. To enable NHS boards to apply the new 2023 Waiting Times Guidance calculations to aggregate data submissions, updates to their IT systems and changes to local processes are required. The majority of boards are yet to fully implement these changes, and this is expected to happen incrementally between now and 2027. At 31 March 2026, 4 boards had upgraded their systems to incorporate the new guidance, affecting 33.1% of ongoing waits for pain management services. Based on estimates provided by boards, this means that less than 1% of ongoing waits are now shorter under the 2023 guidance than they would have been if 2012 calculations were still being applied. Further information is available in the main report.

This release includes the key indicators that featured in the previous Chronic Pain Waiting Times publication relating to the number of patient referrals, patients seen and waiting and length of wait. However, these indicators are now presented for the whole pain management service in an NHS board and the data on patents seen and waiting includes all first appointments. The previous Chronic Pain Waiting Times publication was last released on 9 September 2025.

Further information

The next release of this publication will be 8 September 2026.