Chronic pain waiting times
Quarter ending 30 June 2025

About this release

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.

In recent years, some services have introduced alternative pathways for newly referred patients that offer alternatives to being seen by a consultant. Patients are considered as no longer waiting once they have attended their first appointment with the most appropriate clinician. A change to the existing data collection has been agreed that will see data collected on all first appointments with pain services to reflect these alternative pathways now on offer. A pilot, which ran alongside the existing data collection (covering data from the quarter ending 31 March 2024 to the quarter ending 30 June 2025) has been completed. These new data are under review and will be released for the first time on 9 December 2025. See the full report for details.

Main points

• During the quarter ending 30 June 2025, 5,238 patients were referred to a consultant-led chronic pain clinic. This compares to 5,073 referrals in the previous quarter, an increase of 3.3%, and to 5,170 a year ago in the quarter ending 30 June 2024, an increase of 1.3%. During 2024, an average of 5,140 referrals were made to a chronic pain clinic 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, 1,767 patients were seen at a chronic pain clinic. This compares to 1,699 patients in the previous quarter, an increase of 4.0% and to 1,844 patients seen a year earlier in the quarter ending 30 June 2024, a decrease of 4.2%. 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 (as mentioned above in the About this release section). 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, 49.2% of patients had waited 12 weeks or less to be seen, compared to an average of 51.8% in 2024 and 50.4% in 2019. The proportion of patients who experienced longer waits has increased. For instance, 21.6% of patients waited 52 weeks or more in the latest quarter, compared to an average of 7.9% in 2024 and 0.3% in 2019.
• On 30 June 2025, 5,768 patients were waiting for their first appointment at a chronic pain clinic. This is an increase of 2.8% compared to 31 March 2025, when there were 5,612 patients waiting and an increase of 16.0% compared to a year ago on 30 June 2024, when there were 4,971 patients waiting. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the waiting list was at the lowest point (2,375 patients at 31 March 2021) largely because of reduced referrals in the period April 2020 to March 2021. Since then, the trend has been generally upwards and the number of patients waiting is now higher than prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
• 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. At 30 June 2025, 8.2% of patients had already been waiting 52 weeks or more, compared to an average of 5.4% in 2024 and 0.5% in 2019. Most of these patients were waiting to be treated in NHS Dumfries & Galloway, NHS Lanarkshire and NHS Tayside. Staff vacancies, training of new staff and staff annual leave are reported as the main factors that have contributed to some patients experiencing longer waits.

Trend chart showing data from quarter ending 31 December 2015 to quarter ending 30 June 2025 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 30 June 2025¹

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.

The revised Waiting Times Guidance (2023) will apply to Chronic Pain Waiting Times statistics from the December 2025 release onwards. See the full report for details.

Further information

The next release of this publication will be 9 December 2025.