Fresh data from the Department of Health confirm that Northern Ireland’s hospital waiting lists remain at crisis levels. New quarterly statistics covering the period up to 30 September 2025 show that none of the five Health and Social Care (HSC) Trusts met the draft targets for outpatient, inpatient/day-case or diagnostic services.
The findings matter to anyone who relies on the health service: longer waits can delay diagnosis, prolong pain and—at worst—affect survival rates. The figures also give the first region-wide snapshot drawn largely from encompass, the NHS’s new electronic patient record system, offering a glimpse of how digital data capture may shape future reporting.
Headline waiting-list figures at 30 September 2025
Outpatients
- 542,451 people were waiting for a first consultant-led outpatient appointment.
- Median wait: 64.1 weeks; 95th percentile: 305.6 weeks (almost six years).
- 86.4 % waited longer than nine weeks; 55.6 % waited longer than 52 weeks.
Inpatient and day-case care
- 91,645 patients were awaiting admission.
- Median wait: 35.1 weeks; 95th percentile: 326.7 weeks.
- 68.9 % waited more than 13 weeks; 41.6 % waited more than 52 weeks.
Diagnostics
- 227,674 people were waiting for a diagnostic test.
- 61.9 % had waited more than nine weeks; 38.6 % more than 26 weeks.
- Of 129,080 urgent tests carried out during the quarter, 73.8 % were reported within the two-day target.
Full statistical bulletins can be viewed on the Department of Health website:
Outpatient waiting times,
Inpatient & day-case waiting times, and
Diagnostic waiting times.
How the new encompass system affects the numbers
Encompass, rolled out Trust-by-Trust between November 2023 and May 2025, now supplies most of the waiting-time data. The Department classifies these figures as “official statistics in development”, urging caution when comparing them with legacy datasets. That caveat helps explain why no trend analysis appears in the bulletin, but it also highlights a transition phase in which policymakers must juggle both old and new baselines.
What the bulletin leaves unclear
- Funding and recovery plans: The documents do not specify how much additional resource—financial or staffing—will be directed at reducing the lists, or how the figures align with the Elective Care Framework published in 2021.
- Geographical and speciality breakdowns: Readers learn that no Trust met the targets, but not which specialities (orthopaedics, dermatology, mental health, etc.) are most affected or whether rural areas fare worse.
- Patient outcomes: There is no information on the health impact of protracted waits, such as increased emergency admissions or disease progression.
- Backlog trajectory: Because the Department advises against direct comparison with pre-encompass data, the bulletin does not show whether lists are growing, shrinking or plateauing in real terms.
Broader context the figures do not address
Northern Ireland’s waiting times remain the poorest in the UK, a trend that predates both the pandemic and the introduction of encompass. Workforce shortages, tight budgets and an ongoing lack of political consensus on long-term service reconfiguration all play a role—yet these structural factors are absent from the statistical release. Similarly, there is no discussion of initiatives such as cross-border treatment agreements, independent-sector outsourcing or the proposed regional elective centres, each of which could influence waiting-list dynamics.
Questions worth asking
- How will the Department use encompass data to target specialties or Trusts with the longest waits?
- What additional funding, if any, is earmarked for elective care recovery in the 2026–27 budget cycle?
- Will future bulletins include patient-outcome measures to show the real-world impact of delays?
- How are rural populations and deprived communities affected differently by these prolonged waits?
- Given that 26 % of urgent tests missed the two-day reporting target, what steps are planned to safeguard patients whose conditions may deteriorate quickly?
What to watch next
These statistics underline the scale of the elective care challenge facing the incoming Executive. Stakeholders will look for clearer timelines, funding commitments and specialty-specific action plans when the Department publishes its next recovery update. Progress on integrating encompass across all Trust functions—and on reconciling old and new datasets—will be critical to tracking whether reforms translate into shorter, safer waits for patients.