Current status: Answered by Neil Gray on 14 October 2025
To ask the Scottish Government for what reason Public Health Scotland has paused the 18 weeks referral-to-treatment standard reporting, and what steps are being taken to address any underlying data quality issues.
The 18 weeks Referral to Treatment (RTT) standard is one of a number of targets set by the Scottish Government for access to hospital services.
The decision by Public Health Scotland (PHS) to pause RTT collection and reporting is consistent with the Scottish Government’s Chief Statistician letter to the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) in October 2024 which set out the importance of statisticians having the authority to take decisions to improve their statistics to service a wide range of users.
It is for each individual analytical area in Scottish Government and the agencies, including PHS, to determine the approach they want to take to deliver on the priorities. Critical to that delivery is the ability for statisticians to properly resource the work to develop their priorities and this means that some publications may need to be scaled back or paused to make space for transformative work and deliver on the Statistical Strategic Priorities for Scotland.
PHS’s decision reflects the need to release capacity to focus on new priorities, such as expanding the diagnostic activity statistics for the eight key diagnostic tests. Developing these statistics will contribute to the measurement of progress towards the Scottish Government’s Operational Improvement Plan commitments in the financial year 2025-26.
Furthermore, PHS publishes a wide range of statistics about waiting times for different services and in recent years the focus of NHS boards and Scottish Government has been directed to individual targets for each part of the patient journey such as 12-week Treatment Time Guarantee (TTG) and New Outpatient Standard.
In line with the principles in the Code of Practice for Statistics, PHS informed users of the pause on 18 March 2025 and invited feedback from users to assess the impact of this decision. This information will help inform future plans or PHS’s waiting times statistics.