In the Guardian today:
Record number of people waiting for NHS diagnostic tests in England – One in five of the 1.92m patients on list wait longer than six weeks for tests such as CT and MRI scans, analysis shows. Demand for tests is outstripping the NHS’s ability to meet it and one in five of those on the waiting list – more than 400,000 people – are having to wait longer than the supposed six-week maximum, an analysis of diagnostic services in England has found.
BBC Scotland and the other media operating in Scotland have no equivalent story. Here’s why:
From NHS waiting times – diagnostics – Waits for key diagnostic tests, published today, the above and:
The total waiting list size (number of ongoing waits) for the eight key diagnostic tests combined was 112,696: 27,931 endoscopy waits and 84,765 radiology waits. This is a 9% decrease (-11,296) from the previous quarter-end, when there were 123,992 ongoing waits. The latest quarter end has the lowest number of ongoing waits seen since 31 May 2021 (111,619).
The graph is perhaps not so easy to read but once explained it’s really good news for the Scottish Government.
First the green shaded area on the right shows a massive reduction, since June 2025, in the numbers waiting for radiology, from around 80% to around 60%.
Based on the lines, in radiology, endoscopy and the cluster of all 8 key diagnostic tests, there have been, since December 2025, surges in the percentage waiting 6 weeks or less.
So, all things being equal, per head of population, NHS England might be expected to have around 10 times as many or 1.13m waiting for diagnostic tests. As you can see above, they had 1.92m, around 800 000, 70.8% more than predicted,
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