Waiting Times in Tayside

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A new webpage showing the latest waiting times for outpatient appointments and planned surgery in NHS Tayside will be available from 12th February 2024.

NHS Tayside want to provide patients with the most up-to-date information about waiting times.

The webpage, which will be updated every month with the latest information, is on the NHS Tayside website below

Patients who are waiting will be able to access the most-up-to-date information on how long people have recently waited to be seen in NHS Tayside. The published information will act as a guide rather than provide exact waiting times as patient’s individual clinical needs will determine how long they will wait.

Patient appointment letters will now also include the link and a quick-scan QR code to direct people to the information on the waiting times webpage.

As a result of the backlog caused by the pandemic, some patients are waiting longer for outpatient appointments and routine operations than we would like. Teams are working hard at tackling the backlog of cases and are making really good progress.

However, the main thing that patients have told us is that it would be better for them if they could see the most up-to-date information about waiting times. We therefore developed this webpage to set out the current waits for outpatient appointments and planned surgery to help patients have a bit more certainty about their care and treatment.

Quote / Testimonial:
Every patient is different and waiting times can be affected by a number of things which mean some patients will be seen earlier and some a bit later than the wait set out in the tables.
However, the information is based on the real patient journeys of nine out of 10 of our patients over the previous three months so it is a very good indication of the current waits and we hope patients and their families find it useful.

The information on the webpage is broken down into two information tables:

1. The number of weeks people are waiting for a first appointment at an outpatient clinic

2. The number of weeks people are waiting for an operation or procedure (under the Treatment Time Guarantee) as an inpatient or a day case patient.

The tables list individual specialty areas such as cardiology, gastroenterology and oral surgery. Patients can look down the table to the speciality area for which they are waiting, then look across to see how long the current wait is.

The tables also set out patients who have been assessed by their clinical team as either urgent or routine, as the waiting times differ for each of these categories.

Non-urgent advice: Please Note

The waiting times information available on the website does not show information for emergency (sometimes called unscheduled or unplanned) care. It also does not include information on Cancer Treatment times which are reported nationally by Public Health Scotland.