Cancelled planned operations
Month ending 31 August 2020

About this release

This release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) provides a monthly update on the number of operations in NHSScotland that were cancelled the day before, or on the day the patient was due to be treated. Information on the reasons for cancellations are also included.

It should be highlighted that these statistics are affected by the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) outbreak. In particular, on 17 March, NHSScotland was placed under emergency measures and Boards were asked to suspend all non-urgent elective treatment. This resulted in most patients being cancelled far in advance of their operation. As Scotland moved into Phase 2 of the ‘lockdown’, from the 19 June, Boards started to resume some services as part of the planned remobilisation of services (external website), which includes the rescheduling of cancelled patients.

Main points

• The total number of planned operations across NHSScotland has fallen by 50.7%, from 28,036 in August 2019, to 13,831 in August 2020. Although the number of procedures is half compared to August 2019, there has been an increase of 23.2% from 11,224 in July 2020 and reflects four months of consecutive growth as services have gradually remobilised.
• In August 2020, 987 operations, or 7.1% of all planned operations, were cancelled the day before or on the day the patient was due to be treated. This compares to 699 (6.2%) in July and 2,343 (8.4%) in August 2019. At Health Board level this percentage ranged from 2% to 11.3%.
• In August 2020, of all planned operations cancelled in this way:
  • 298 (2.2%) were cancelled by the patient
  • 468 (3.4%) were cancelled by the hospital based on clinical reasons
  • 158 (1.1%) were cancelled by the hospital due to capacity or non-clinical reasons
  • 63 (0.5%) were cancelled due to other reasons.

Background

These statistics are released monthly. Data for this publication are submitted from NHS Board theatre systems.

The following definitions are used for the cancellation reason groupings:

• Cancellation based on clinical reason by hospital includes patient unwell, patient not prepared for procedure correctly by hospital and patient did not follow pre op instruction
• Cancellation based on capacity or non-clinical reason by hospital includes no beds available, staff not available, equipment not available and theatre session overran
• Cancellation by patient includes patient decides not to go ahead with procedure, patient unable to attend, patient did not attend and patient did not attend pre-op
• Other includes fire alarm prevents operation from taking place, weather prevented patient / staff travelling and patient transport did not arrive in time to bring patient to hospital.

Further information

Data from this publication is available to download from the data files section at the top of this page. Open data is available from the Scottish Health and Social Care Open Data platform (external website).

For more information on cancelled planned operations see the cancelled planned operations section. For related topics, please see the waiting times pages on the Data and Intelligence website (external website).

The next release of this publication will be November 2020.

NHS Performs

A selection of information from this publication is included in NHS Performs (external website). NHS Performs is a website that brings together a range of information on how hospitals and NHS Boards within NHSScotland are performing.