2026 What to look out for – health statistics in Scotland

Summary

There are many statistics which can help people understand health and the performance of the National Health Service (NHS) in Scotland.

Public Health Scotland (PHS) publishes a wide range of statistics, including on NHS performance, infectious disease surveillance and other public health topics. PHS has an area of its website which directs users to official statistics published by PHS that monitor the commitments made by the Scottish Government in its NHS Scotland Operational Improvement Plan.

The Scottish Government also publishes some statistics about health, such as the Scottish Health Survey and the Health and Care Experience Survey.

Statistics about the NHS workforce in Scotland are published by NHS Education for Scotland, statistics about ambulance response times are published by the Scottish Ambulance Service and statistics about 111 operations are published by NHS24.

Things to consider

Due to the devolved nature of UK health care, differing legislative frameworks, policies and priorities, commissioning processes and patient data systems can make it challenging to produce comparable statistics.

In 2024, producers of health statistics across the UK collaborated with the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to produce a series of articles on different health data topics. These articles advise which data can and cannot be compared between UK nations. For example, statistics about accident and emergency (A&E) wait times for Type 1, Major Emergency and Emergency Departments (departments providing 24-hour consultant-led services) are broadly comparable for England, Scotland and Wales. However, users should not directly compare statistics about planned care waiting times, ambulance response times, the health care workforce, or cancer treatment waiting times between Scotland and other UK nations.

Users should also be aware that PHS advises not to compare statistics about delayed discharges (defined in the PHS publication as when a hospital patient who is clinically ready for discharge from inpatient hospital care continues to occupy a hospital bed beyond the date that they are ready to be discharged) with other UK nations. Delayed discharges are not comparable between UK nations due to differences in data definitions and recording.

What to look out for

Waiting times for NHS treatment are a topic of high public interest across the UK. There are several sources of waiting times statistics in Scotland, including on:

As explained by PHS in a recent blog, it is not possible to definitively say how many people are waiting for NHS treatment in Scotland. This is because there is no single database containing all patient data in Scotland – much of the available data about waits is about groups rather than individual people. PHS’s best estimate is that 1 in 9 people in Scotland are currently on an NHS waiting list for either a new outpatient appointment or for day case or inpatient treatment. However, many people waiting will also be on other waiting lists, such as for diagnostic tests, CAMHS support, psychological therapies, pain management services or cancer treatment. There are also some types of NHS treatment where no national waiting times data exists, for example return outpatient appointments and neurodevelopmental conditions.

Statements should not add different waiting lists together to try to obtain overall totals of people waiting. As many people are on more than one waiting list, adding lists together results in double counting individuals. This includes not adding together waiting lists for new outpatient appointments and waiting lists for day case or inpatient treatment, as advised in PHS’s stage of treatment publication.

Statements should be clear whether waiting list figures are reported by the number of ongoing waits or patients waiting. For example, new outpatient and day case or inpatient waiting lists are reported by the number of ongoing waits (or, in other words, the number of waits for different treatments) rather than the number of people waiting. This means that the figures could include the same person more than once if they are waiting for more than one treatment and do not necessarily represent the total number of people waiting.

Finally, it is helpful to be aware of recent changes made to the way that waiting times for new outpatient appointments and day case or inpatient treatment are calculated. In 2023 the Scottish Government introduced new guidance on calculating waiting times. The guidance included new rules about “clock resets” and how they impact the calculation of waiting times. After two years of work with Scottish health boards to implement the new guidance, PHS updated how it calculates waiting times in its October 2025 release. In its official statistics, and an accompanying blog, PHS explained that under the new rules, waiting times estimates are marginally shorter than was previously the case. Our recent compliance review of these statistics concluded that this change was implemented transparently and impartially.