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Chamber and committees

Question reference: S6W-30129

  • Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
  • Date lodged: 24 September 2024
  • Current status: Answered by Neil Gray on 4 October 2024

Question

To ask the Scottish Government how many children and young people have waited over a year for medical treatment in each year since 1999.


Answer

Neither Scottish Government or Public Health Scotland (PHS) centrally hold all of the information requested.

Table 1 presents the latest available statistics on the total number of admissions for patients aged less than 16 years who had waited over a year for planned treatment as an inpatient or day case covered by the Treatment Time Guarantee (TTG) from 2013 onwards. The data below are presented at NHSScotland level for all specialties, broken down by calendar year. Please note that this does not cover services that are exempt from the TTG, including obstetrics services, and organ, tissue or cell transplantation whether from a living or deceased donor. Spinal treatment by injection or surgical intervention was excluded from TTG until 1 April 2014 and designated national specialist services for surgical intervention of spinal scoliosis was excluded until 1 October 2014. These have been included in the TTG reporting from these dates.

Table 1 – Total number of admissions as an inpatient or day case for patients aged less than 16 years who had waited over a year (52 weeks), NHSScotland and all specialty level, by calendar year, from 2013 onwards

Calendar Year

Waited over 52 weeks

2013

0

2014

22

2015

5

2016

9

2017*

25

2018*

137

2019

935

2020

779

2021

1,889

2022

2,001

2023

3,923

2024**

1,927

*Data for NHS Tayside are unavailable between April 2017 and June 2018 for inpatients and day cases. Therefore, please note that NHS Tayside data are excluded from NHSScotland totals for the affected period in the above table and data should be interpreted as ‘NHSScotland excluding NHS Tayside’.

**Please note that calendar year 2024 only includes data from 1 January 2024 to 30 June 2024.