IVF waiting times in Scotland
Quarter ending 30 September 2025

About this release

This release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) provides a quarterly update on how long eligible patients waited from referral to a screening appointment for in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment by the NHS in Scotland. The Scottish Government's national standard is for 90% of eligible patients to be screened at an IVF Centre within 52 weeks of receipt of a referral from a secondary care/acute consultant.

Fully up to date data for the Glasgow IVF Centre continues to be unavailable. However, with an improvement in the process to add referrals to the waiting list from July 2025 onwards the data lag has reduced to three months. PHS can report on referrals, the number of patients waiting and their length of wait up to 30 June 2025 for the Glasgow IVF Centre and therefore Scotland as a whole. These data for the quarter ending 30 September 2025 are unavailable. Patients screened and performance against the IVF waiting time standard are reported for the full period of October 2015 to September 2025 for Scotland and all IVF Centres. See the full report for more data quality information.

Main points

• During the quarter ending 30 September 2025, 362 patients were screened. The 90% standard was met, with all patients attending a screening appointment within 52 weeks of referral.
• All patients were screened within 26 weeks at the Aberdeen IVF Centre, and most patients at the Dundee and Glasgow IVF Centres also experienced a wait of this length (88.7% and 80.7% respectively). Only 6.7% at the Edinburgh IVF Centre were screened within 26 weeks.
• 22.1% of patients screened during the quarter ending 30 September 2025 waited between 40 and 52 weeks from referral. This is the highest proportion of patients who experienced this length of wait since the quarter ending 31 March 2021 (21.3%), and the majority were at the Edinburgh IVF Centre.
• At 30 June 2025, 952 patients were waiting to attend a screening appointment. This is a continuation of an increasing trend in the number of patients waiting since August 2024 (750 patients).
• There was a decrease in the combined waiting list size for the Aberdeen, Dundee and Edinburgh IVF Centres from 31 July 2025 (540 patients) to 30 September 2025 (521 patients). At 30 September 2025, there were no patients waiting 52 weeks or more. All patients were waiting within 13 weeks of referral at the Aberdeen IVF Centre, 98.3% of patients were waiting within 39 weeks at the Dundee IVF Centre and 10.6% of patients were waiting between 40 and 52 weeks at the Edinburgh IVF Centre.

This stacked bar chart for patients waiting across Scotland shows the number of patients waiting to be screened at the end of each month from January 2019 to September 2025. Data for the Glasgow Centre is only available up to 30 June 2025. Following the pause of IVF services due to the pandemic, the waiting list rose to 946 patients at 30 June 2020. Fluctuation in the waiting list size followed before peaking at 995 patients at 31 March 2023. There was then some fluctuation in the waiting list size followed by a month-on-month reduction from 913 patients at 31 October 2023 (913 patients) to 750 patients by 31 August 2024. Since then, the waiting list size has risen once again to reach 952 patients at 30 June 2025. The number of patients waiting between July 2025 and September 2025 is incomplete for Scotland because of unavailable Glasgow IVF Centre data. For the other IVF Centres together (Aberdeen, Dundee and Edinburgh), the waiting list decreased from 540 patients at 31 July 2025 to 521 patients at 30 September 2025.

Close

Monthly trend of number of patients waiting to be screened across Scotland, by IVF Centre.

Background

IVF is an effective method of assisted reproductive technology used to treat infertility. This includes intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) for male infertility. Where this publication refers to IVF, it includes IVF and ICSI. One full cycle of IVF includes ovulation induction, egg retrieval, fertilisation and transfer of fresh embryos, followed by freezing of suitable embryos and subsequent replacement of these provided the couple still fulfil the access criteria.

Each NHS Board in Scotland commissions cycles of IVF from one of the four specialist tertiary Centres providing NHS treatment (Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow).

This is the first release of statistics following the implementation of the Scottish Government's revised Waiting Times Guidance which was published in December 2023 and implemented by PHS in July 2025. Our analysis shows minimal impact on IVF Waiting Times and therefore trend analysis is considered to be robust. More information is available in the full report.

Further information

The next release of this publication will be 24 February 2026.