Acute hospital activity and NHS beds information (quarterly)
Quarter ending 31 December 2025
Accredited official statistics
- Published
- 26 May 2026 (Latest release)
- Type
- Statistical report
- Author
- Public Health Scotland
Data summary
Main points
Outpatients
p - provisional.
There were just over one million (1,025,781) outpatient attendances between 1 October and 31 December 2025 – a 1% increase compared to the same quarter in the previous year. Of these, 33% (341,501 attendances) were new cases. The remaining 67% (684,280 attendances) were patients returning for follow up appointments. The percentage of new and return outpatients is similar to the same quarter in the previous year. Between 1 October and 31 December 2025, 8.3% (92,372) of all outpatient appointments were not kept without prior notification by the patient ('Did Not Attends'). This rate of non-attendance is unchanged from the same quarter in 2024.
Inpatients and day cases
There were 261,715 hospital admissions between 1 October and 31 December 2025 – a 2% increase compared to the same quarter in the previous year. Of these, 46% (120,192) were emergency inpatient admissions, 10% (25,972) elective (planned) inpatient admissions, and 44% (114,153) day cases. These percentages are similar to the same quarter in 2024. Between 1 October and 31 December 2025, the average length of stay for inpatients was 7.6 days, which is 0.1 days less than for the same quarter in 2024. The average length of stay was 3.2 days for elective inpatients and 8.4 days for emergency inpatients.
National Treatment Centres (NTCs)
NTCs are a network of healthcare facilities designed to deliver high-volume planned and diagnostic care efficiently and consistently across Scotland. NTC's are being used to deliver on the NHS Scotland Operational Improvement Plan (OIP) to increase capacity and reduce waiting times.
There were 11,691 procedures undertaken at the National Treatment Centres (NTCs) between 1 October and 31 December 2025 – a 4% increase compared to the previous quarter. Of these, NHS Golden Jubilee completed the highest number of procedures (8,511), followed by NHS Highland (2,712), then NHS Forth Valley (331) and NHS Fife (137).
Beds
There were on average 13,550 available staffed beds per day for all acute specialties in the quarter ending 31 December 2025 – a 0.1% decrease compared to the same quarter in the previous year. An available staffed bed is a bed which is resourced for inpatient or day case care. Of these, 9,604 (71%) were for medical specialties and 3,946 (29%) were for surgical specialties. These percentages are unchanged from the same quarter in 2024. For all acute specialties in the quarter ending 31 December 2025, the percentage occupancy was 88.3%, a 0.9 percentage point decrease compared to the same quarter in the previous year. The percentage occupancy is the percentage of available staffed beds that were occupied on average by inpatients during the period.
Data quality
There are known issues with the quality of data presented such as inpatient and day case completeness. For more information, please see the Data quality and Trend data sections. Please note that the focus is on new and outstanding data issues. Resolved issues are listed in previous publication releases.
Further information
For the first time in our quarterly release, management information data for all National Treatment Centre (NTC) locations are included. Annual NTC activity figures continue to be published as part of our annual publication release.
At present, it is not possible to accurately differentiate in national data returns between NTC activity and the rest of the activity at NHS Golden Jubilee or NHS Forth Valley. Therefore, management information data submissions are received from the NHS Boards. It should be noted that these submissions are not subject to the same data quality and validation processes as national returns, and the methodology and figures in this report may change. Consequently, this data should be considered as Official Statistics in Development.
The data for the most recent quarter are provisional. Provisional data are subject to change in future publications, as submissions may be updated to reflect a more accurate and complete set of data from NHS Boards.
Observed trends may be influenced by data submission completeness, small numbers, seasonal variation, and wider contextual factors, including the lasting effects of the COVID 19 pandemic on the volume and pattern of acute hospital activity.
Disclosure control methods have been applied to the data to protect patient confidentiality: therefore, some figures on total counts may not be additive.
Further information on this quarterly publication is available on these web pages. Data from this publication are available to download from the Data files and Data explorer sections of our website and from the Scottish Health and Social Care Open Data platform (external website). Annual data are available from the annual publication page on our website.
Publications released before May 2020 may be found on the Data and Intelligence website. Background information on hospital care can be found in the Hospital Care topic area.
The next release of this quarterly acute hospital activity & NHS beds publication will be in November 2026.