Professor John Robertson OBA
From Public Health Scotland today:
During March 2025, there were 25,226 operations planned to take place across NHSScotland. This is 6.9% higher (+1,626) than the number planned in the same month a year previously in March 2024 (23,600).
Of all planned operations during March 2025 in NHS Scotland, 816 (3.2%) were cancelled by the hospital for clinical reasons, 719 (2.9%) were cancelled by the patient, 449 (1.8%) were cancelled by the hospital due to capacity or non-clinical reasons, and 81 (0.3%) were cancelled for other reasons.
Month after month NHS Scotland’s hospitals have to cancel very few, around 2%, of the thousands of planned operations, due to factors they cannot control – staff and facility/equipment availability. These cancellations may be due to unexpected staff illness or a sudden surge in demand due to, for example, a major road traffic or industrial accident. Cancellations by staff or patients for clinical reasons are perfectly reasonable and cannot be considered a performance failure.
In March 2025, comparable to many months before, NHS Scotland was ready to deal with 98.2% of more than 25 000 operations on time. This is simply fantastic and worthy of praise but we never see it on ‘Scotland’s media.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
This can’t be true Stramer and his Scottish MP lapdogs thinks Scotland is a basket case….roll on Indy.
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I looked for similar figures for NHS England but couldn’t find any. No prize for guessing why not. Whenever possible it’d be best to be able to compare them. That would then put both of them in their proper context. Scotland’s politicians at Westminster should be highlighting issues like this instead of pointless grandstanding. Public pressure could also be placed on the media to stop the endless ‘here’s the bad figures for Scotland’ without mentioning the lack of availability of the same info down south. Reporting only one is like giving only the home team score without the other.
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I did too. It’s not the only thing they don’t record yet which NHS Scotland are expected to.
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” This is simply fantastic and worthy of praise but we never see it on ‘Scotland’s media ” is correct, only condemnations from Tsunami Baillie et al is permitted.
As alluded to above, the contrast between institutions in Scotland willing to publish all manner of information without fear or favour to those in England is stark – It’s not just NHS information in England which remains obscured, everything from pollution levels to potential water shortage are given the same ‘politically sensitive’ treatment, and that extends to Scotland when it’s a ‘reserved’ issue. eg – There are all manner of problems with parts of ‘the grid’ in Scotland, but BBC Scotland will never dare report on it as it would be politically embarrassing to Westminster.
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