Chronic pain waiting times
Quarter ending 31 December 2024

About this release

On 21 April 2025, the summary document was revised (see Revision statement). No national data was affected.

This release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) reports on the number of referrals to a pain management service, the length of time patients waited to be seen at a first outpatient appointment, the number of patients waiting at the end of the quarter and the length of their wait. These services provide chronic pain assessment and management and are delivered by multi-disciplinary teams. Chronic pain is defined as pain that carries on for longer than 12 weeks despite medication or treatment.

Main points

• During the quarter ending 31 December 2024, 5,021 patients were referred to a consultant-led chronic pain clinic. This is a decrease of 5.5% compared to the previous quarter, when 5,316 patients were referred. During 2024, an average of 5,149 referrals were made to a chronic pain clinic each quarter. This is higher than during 2023, when on average 4,990 patients were referred each quarter. Referrals are similar to the levels seen prior to the COVID-19 pandemic when on average 5,197 patients were referred each quarter during 2019.
• During the same quarter, 1,907 patients were seen at a chronic pain clinic. This compares to 1,986 patients in the previous quarter, a decrease of 4.0% and to 2,221 patients seen a year earlier in the quarter ending 31 December 2023, a decrease of 14.1%. During 2024, an average of just under 2,000 patients were seen each quarter which is lower than prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, when an average of just under 3,000 patients were seen per quarter during 2019. This is largely due to some NHS Boards introducing new pathways that offer some patients alternatives to being seen by a consultant (see Section 1.2 of the publication report for further information). In these statistics, these patients are considered as no longer waiting once they take up this offer.
• Of those seen at a consultant-led clinic in the latest quarter, 1,009 (52.9%) had waited 12 weeks or less to be seen, which is similar to the experience of patients seen in 2019. However, the proportion of patients who had experienced longer waits has increased. For instance, 31.0% had waited 25 weeks or more to be seen and of this, 10.1% waited 52 weeks or more. In comparison, during 2019, 14.3% of patients had waited 25 weeks or more to be seen and of this, only 0.3% of patients had waited 52 weeks or more.
• On 31 December 2024, 5,329 patients were waiting for their first appointment at a chronic pain clinic. This is a decrease of 0.9% compared to 30 September 2024, when there were 5,378 patients waiting. During 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic began to impact services, there were on average, 4,963 patients waiting at the end of each quarter. When services were impacted, the waiting list reduced significantly to 2,375, due largely to reduced referrals in the period April 2020 to March 2021. The trend since then has generally been upwards.
• Of those waiting to be seen at the end of each quarter, the proportion of patients who had been waiting longer for their first appointment has increased. During 2019, on average, 33.8% of patients had already been waiting 13 weeks or more, compared to 53.0% at 31 December 2024. Most of these patients were waiting to be treated in NHS Dumfries & Galloway, NHS Grampian, NHS Lanarkshire and NHS Tayside. Staff vacancies and lack of cover for long term absence are reported as the main factors that have contributed to some patients experiencing longer waits in these Boards.

rend chart showing data from quarter ending 31 December 2015 to quarter ending 31 December 2024 with bars showing the number of patients waiting per quarter. Each bar is broken down by the length of time patients have been waiting: 12 weeks or less (darker blue bar), 13 - 24 weeks (blue bar), 25 - 51 weeks (paler blue bar), and 52+ weeks (grey bar).

Close

Distribution of wait for patients waiting at a consultant-led Chronic Pain clinic from quarter ending 31 December 2015 to 31 December 2024¹

Note 1: Data for NHS Orkney is unavailable for the quarters ending 31/12/2015 to 31/03/2016.

Background

Further information on chronic pain can be found on the NHS Inform website. The data presented here have been adjusted for periods of patient unavailability. Any adjustments are based on the NHSScotland Waiting Times Guidance. For the NHS Boards who submit data on pain psychology clinics, further detail is available in the data tables and the publication report.

Further information

The next release of this publication will be 10 June 2025.