All forthcoming outputs will be published at 9.30am unless otherwise stated.
Viral respiratory diseases in Scotland surveillance report - the narrative report returns to weekly reporting on 8 October 2026. Please note there will be several changes introduced for the 2026/27 season, such as an upgrade of NHS 24 symptom definitions, refinement of the lab-confirmed hospital admissions identification process, and expansion of the number of sites included in syndromic SARI. Some other changes may still require further adjustment and hence these outputs within the release should be considered as Official Statistics in Development. For full details of these changes please see details available in ‘Changes this season - Technical information’.
General Practice in-hours activity - the monthly General Practice in-hours activity publication has been paused because of data quality issues associated with the migration of GP practices from EMIS to Vision. These changes have affected the comparability and interpretation of the data, including apparent increases in recorded patient encounters that may reflect differences in how information is recorded following migration rather than genuine changes in GP activity.
PHS has been investigating these issues and considering options for restarting publication. A preferred approach is now being developed to make the best use of data that can be published reliably while being clear about its limitations.
Work is underway to finalise the content, publication schedule and data quality assurance needed for the revised approach. Publication will resume once PHS is satisfied that the data can be presented in a sufficiently robust and transparent way. Further information on the timing and scope of the revised publication will be provided when these arrangements are confirmed.
Waiting times for diagnostic tests – the frequency of this publication is moving from quarterly to monthly, with the first monthly release planned for Tuesday 10 November. This will feature a streamlined report and interactive dashboard showing latest statistics for diagnostic waiting times and associated activity.
Pain management – the next quarterly release of this publication, planned for Tuesday 8 December, features statistics that have been upgraded from ‘official statistics in development’ to ‘official statistics’. This follows consolidation of appropriate quality assurance processes following implementation of the extended dataset on pain management waiting times a year ago.
Waiting times and health inequalities – we are developing a new publication, scheduled for release on Tuesday 15 December, exploring key waiting times indicators by age, sex and deprivation. This first release will include a short report and interactive dashboard, and will be badged as ‘official statistics in development’. We will be seeking feedback on this initial release at phs.waitingtimes@phs.scot to shape the timelines and content of future reports
Scottish cervical screening programme statistics - Public Health Scotland provides a range of annual statistics relating to the Scottish cervical screening programme, including coverage and uptake by deprivation and age group. In addition, information on laboratory services is available. On 28 May 2025 Scott Heald wrote to Ed Humpherson to request a temporary suspension of the accredited official statistics status for PHS cervical screening statistics following identification of data quality issues. We published data in a new report on 29 July 2025 and have continued to work with the data supplier to finalise 2024/25 data and resolve data issues. This publication was released on 24 February 2026.
Scottish breast screening programme statistics - this publication series is currently under review due to identification of data quality issues. Users should be aware that the previously published statistics have errors. As of 26 May 2026, we continue our ongoing communication with our data supplier to investigate and conduct more detailed analysis of these quality issues on the published statistics. We will provide a further update to this note on 25 August 2026. Please see correspondence from 24 February for more details. If you have questions about this work, please email phs.adultscreening@phs.scot.
Early Learning and Childcare: Analysis of family wellbeing - pre announced for 21 April 2026 has been delayed until Summer 2026 to allow for additional quality assurance checks. A new date will be preannounced 4-6 weeks ahead of publication.
The three Physical Activity publications pre-announced for 15 September have been postponed to allow additional PHS work to be completed in support of these reports. These will now be released on 18 November 2026.
Walk-In Centres Monthly Management Information - please note this publication has been renamed GP led walk-in services Monthly Management Information.
Unscheduled Care Pathways - pre announced for 27 October 2026 has been delayed as more time is needed to develop the statistics to meet user needs. A new publication date has been confirmed as 15 December 2026.
Hospital Standardised Mortality Ratios - pre announced for 10 November 2026 has been delayed until February 2027 to allow for time for further data quality checks following SMR01 Data incompleteness.
