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IVF Waiting Times in Scotland

A quarterly summary of waiting times and waiting lists for IVF in Scotland.

TheField names have been changed in the quarterly files with the May 2021 release to express values in the number of Weeks instead of the number of Days. This change was made throughout the publication report and data tables to present more understandable statistics to the reader.

The files where field names have changed are: Completed Wait by IVF Centre and Completed Wait by Referring Board. The Waiting by IVF Centre and Waiting by Referring Board files have been replaced with Waiting by IVF Centre by Month and Waiting by Referring Board by Month to provide additional monthly data, with the values also expressed in Number of Weeks.

The statistics available in this release continue to be constrained by the availability of quality-assured data from the Glasgow IVF Centre. Prior to the May 2023 release, issues were identified with some aspects of data previously submitted by this IVF Centre. Progress has been made to address these issues and as a result, some previously published statistics have changed.

In this release, PHS can report on the number of patients screened and performance against the waiting time standard for both the Glasgow IVF Centre and Scotland for the period October 2015 to September 2025. Data on the number of referrals are reported for the period January 2016 to June 2025, while data for patients waiting are reported for October 2015 to June 2025.

A full dataset is published for the 3 other IVF Centres, with the exception of patients waiting for the Edinburgh IVF Centre at 31 January 2019.

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field Value
Source Aggregate counts accredited and derived from individual NHS Scotland Boards are submitted monthly to PHS using a defined Excel template. ART/IVF Waiting Times Data Warehouse consists of a series of 'open' records for patients still waiting for treatment and 'closed' records when patients are removed from the waiting list.
Author PHS Waiting Times Team
Last Updated November 25, 2025, 13:05 (GMT)
Created April 8, 2020, 14:29 (BST)
Contact Address Public Health Scotland, Gyle Square, 1 South Gyle Crescent, Edinburgh EH12 9EB.
Subject Access and Waiting Times
Frequency Quarterly
Time frame of data and timeliness Data from April 2014
Coverage Data covers all Health Boards in Scotland and the four IVF Centres (Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow).
Completeness 100% of submitted data are used for analysis and publication.
Accuracy PHS receives aggregate data from each NHS IVF Centre Board. Although aggregated data cannot be systematically validated by PHS, reported data are compared to previous figures and to expected trends. Derivations of the figures and data accuracy are matters for individual NHS IVF Centre Boards. The data from the ART/IVF warehouse is subject to a sign-off procedure each quarter before publication.
Continuity of data Field names have been changed in the quarterly files with the May 2021 release to express values in the number of Weeks instead of the number of Days. The files where field names have changed are: Completed Wait by IVF Centre; Completed Wait by Referring Board. The Waiting by IVF Centre and Waiting by Referring Board files have been replaced with Waiting by IVF Centre by Month and Waiting by referring Board by month files to provide addtional monthly data. The values are expressed in the number of Weeks.
Concepts and definitions Definitions not contained in this report are available in the report produced by the National Infertility Group at https://www.gov.scot/publications/national-infertility-group-report/
Disclosure The PHS protocol on Statistical Disclosure Protocol is followed.
Revision statement If NHS Boards discover that data submitted for publication is incorrect, or that data are missing, further re-submissions can be made up until the publication submission deadline date. Any revised figures will then be reflected within the current publication. Figures contained within each publication may also be subject to change in future publications as submissions may be updated to reflect a more accurate and complete set of data submissions.
Official statistics designation Official Statistics
Relevance and key uses of the statistics Waiting times are important to patients and are a measure of how the NHS is responding to demands for services. Measuring and regular reporting of waiting times highlights where there are delays in the system and enables monitoring of the effectiveness of NHS performance throughout the country. The NHS in Scotland has been set a number of targets for maximum waiting times. Other uses of the data include information requests for a variety of customers, e.g. research charities, public companies, Freedom of Information requests, information support to Boards, health intelligence work, parliamentary questions, and targets.
Format csv
Language English
Links

IVF Waiting Times publication