IVF waiting times in Scotland
Quarter ending 31 December 2025

About this release

This release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) provides a quarterly update on how long eligible patients waited from referral to a screening appointment for in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment by the NHS in one of Scotland's four specialist centres in Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh or Dundee. The Scottish Government's national standard is for 90% of eligible patients to be screened at an IVF Centre within 52 weeks of receipt of a referral from a secondary care/acute consultant.

Patients screened and performance against the IVF waiting time standard are reported up to 31 December 2025 for Scotland and all IVF Centres. Fully up to date data for the Glasgow IVF Centre continues to be unavailable. However, with an improvement in the process to add referrals to the waiting list from July 2025 onwards the data lag has reduced to two months. PHS can report on referrals, the number of patients waiting and their length of wait up to 31 October 2025 for the Glasgow IVF Centre and therefore Scotland as a whole. These data are unavailable for the Glasgow IVF Centre for November and December 2025. See the full report for more data quality information.

Main points

• During the quarter ending 31 December 2025, 313 patients were screened. The 90% standard was met, with all patients attending a screening appointment within 52 weeks of referral.
• All patients were screened within 26 weeks at the Aberdeen IVF Centre and most patients at the Dundee IVF Centre also experienced a wait of this length (68.8%). This proportion was much lower at the Glasgow and Edinburgh IVF Centres (39.3% and 5.6% respectively).
• 23.6% of patients screened during the quarter ending 31 December 2025 waited between 40 and 52 weeks from referral. This is the highest proportion of patients who experienced this length of wait since the quarter ending December 2020 and the majority were at the Edinburgh IVF Centre.
• At 31 October 2025 1,007 patients were waiting to attend a screening appointment, a reduction from the peak at 30 June 2025 (1,026 patients). Of these, 44.7% had been waiting 13 weeks or less, 34.3% had been waiting between 14 and 26 weeks, 16.1% between 27 and 39 weeks and 5.0% between 40 and 52 weeks. There were no patients waiting more than 52 weeks.
• There was a decrease in the combined waiting list size for the Aberdeen, Dundee and Edinburgh IVF Centres from 557 patients at 30 November 2025 to 514 patients at 31 December 2025. At 31 December 2025, all patients had been waiting 26 weeks or less from referral at the Aberdeen IVF Centre, compared to 91.2% at the Dundee IVF Centre and 61.0% at the Edinburgh IVF Centre. No patients had been waiting more than 52 weeks at these Centres.

This stacked bar chart for patients waiting across Scotland shows the number of patients waiting to be screened at month ends between 31 January 2022 and 31 December 2025. As a result of the referral backlog, data for the Glasgow Centre is only available up to 31 October 2025. At 31 October 2025 1,007 patients were waiting across Scotland. Of these, 54 patients were waiting at the Aberdeen IVF Centre, 139 at the Dundee IVF Centre, 376 at the Edinburgh IVF Centre and 438 at the Glasgow IVF Centre. For the Aberdeen, Dundee and Edinburgh IVF Centres together at 31 December 2025, there were 514 patients waiting. Of these, 50 patients were waiting at the Aberdeen IVF Centre, 113 at the Dundee IVF Centre and 351 at the Edinburgh IVF Centre.

Close

Monthly trend of number of patients waiting to be screened across Scotland, by IVF Centre.

Background

IVF is an effective method of assisted reproductive technology used to treat infertility. This includes intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) for male infertility. Where this publication refers to IVF, it includes IVF and ICSI. One full cycle of IVF includes ovulation induction, egg retrieval, fertilisation and transfer of fresh embryos, followed by freezing of suitable embryos and subsequent replacement of these provided the couple still fulfil the access criteria.

Each NHS Board in Scotland commissions cycles of IVF from one of the four specialist tertiary Centres providing NHS treatment (Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow).

This is the second release of statistics following the implementation of the Scottish Government's revised Waiting Times Guidance which was published in December 2023 and implemented by PHS in July 2025. Our analysis shows minimal impact on IVF Waiting Times and therefore trend analysis is considered to be robust. More information is available in the full report.

Further information

The next release of this publication will be 26 May 2026.