Further drop in year-long waits for NHS treatment

The number of people who waited over a year to see an NHS specialist has fallen again, new figures show.

One of the latest monthly reports from Public Health Scotland shows there were nearly 63,000 waits of more than 12 months for inpatient and outpatient treatment, a 10% drop from the previous month.

About one in nine Scots are thought to be on a waiting list - the majority for outpatient services and a quarter of them waiting for inpatient or day case admission.

The Scottish government has committed to eradicating long waits by next month.

The latest monthly statistics cover all patients waiting for an appointment or procedure as well as those seen and removed from a waiting list up to December.

The data shows long waits for outpatient, inpatient and day case procedures have fallen every month since July.

A separate PHS report showed that 5.6% more operations were carried out last year (274,638) than the previous year.

The government has offered extra funding of up to £20m to health boards this year to "build on this progress".

Health Secretary Neil Gray said the NHS had now "turned a corner".

"We are seeing downward trends across nearly all waiting list indicators which shows our targeted investment this year is having a real impact on people's lives, " he said.

"None of this would be possible without out hard-working NHS staff and I want to thank each and every one of them for the progress they are delivering."

Following the Covid pandemic, the Scottish government introduced new targets to tackle backlogs in planned care.

More than £100m was allocated to specialities with the longest waits, such as orthopaedics and ophthalmology.

It was hoped that waits exceeding two years and subsequently one year would be eradicated in most specialities by September 2024.

None of those targets were met, and the Scottish government made a new pledge in March 2025 to eradicate waits of over a year for certain appointments or procedures.

The Scottish Conservatives said the NHS would not be able to meet the latest target as tens of thousands of patients were still enduring "appalling delays".

Their health spokesman Dr Sandesh Gulhane said: "These lengthy delays – which were virtually eradicated in England under the previous UK Conservative government – take a heavy toll on patients' physical and mental health.

"Scots are not buying the desperate spin from the SNP anymore and John Swinney's fingerprints are all over his party's failures on the NHS."

According to the Royal College of GPs (RCGP), about a quarter of working time for general practice doctors in Scotland is spent supporting patients who are waiting for specialist appointments, placing a "significant and unsustainable pressure" on staff.

RCGP Scotland vice chair Dr Chris Williams said: "When patients face long periods on secondary care waiting lists, they often return to general practice for ongoing care or as their condition deteriorates while they wait to be seen."

He added: "There is real moral distress associated with repeatedly seeing patients who are suffering in an overloaded system.

"It is profoundly demoralising for all healthcare professionals who want to do the best for their patients but are constrained by circumstances beyond their control."

He called for better funding for general practice to help prevent people from "needing to join waiting lists in the first place".