Official Statistics
All data contained within this publication are designated as official statistics.
Published by: Information & Analysis
Directorate, Department of Health
Statisticians: Adam Robinson, Thomas Cash & Heidi
Rodgers
Contact: statistics@health-ni.gov.uk
Reporting Period: 1 July 2025 - 30 September
2025
Publication Date: 4 December 2025
The next quarterly publication is scheduled for 4 March 2026. Latest
updates to all DoH statistical releases can be found here Statistical
releases calendar | Department of Health.
Coverage: Northern Ireland
Frequency: Quarterly
On 9 November 2023 the South Eastern Health and Social Care (HSC) Trust launched ‘encompass’ - a new electronic patient record system. The system also went live in Belfast Trust on 6 June 2024, in Northern Trust on 7 November 2024, and in Southern and Western Trusts on 8 May 2025. Waiting times data for Northern Trust for quarter ending December 2024, and reporting turnaround times data for Southern Trust for quarter ending June 2025, are not currently available.
Figures sourced from encompass are considered to be ‘official statistics in development’, which are a subset of Official Statistics in line with the Code of Practice for Statistics. While caution must be exercised when using these figures and they are not directly comparable with legacy (pre-encompass) data, they are a meaningful representation of what they measure and are of sufficient quality for publication and use.
A diagnostic service provides an examination, test, or procedure used to identify a person’s disease or condition and which allows a medical diagnosis to be made. There are three categories of diagnostic test: Imaging test; Physiological Measurement test; and Day Case Endoscopy.
This statistical release presents information on waiting and reporting times for diagnostic services in Northern Ireland and reports on the performance of the Health and Social Care (HSC) Trusts against the draft waiting and reporting times targets which state that:
All of the data contained in this release are published in Excel file format to facilitate secondary analysis, including additional breakdowns by HSC Trust, weeks waiting and reporting times. The data are available at the following link:
Figures sourced from encompass are considered to be ‘official statistics in development’. Therefore, caution must be exercised when using these figures.
Please note that Pure Tone Audiometry data sourced from encompass are currently under review with HSC Trust services and are, therefore, subject to change.
Echocardiography data sourced from encompass are currently under review.
227,674 patients were waiting for a diagnostic test at 30 September 2025.
61.9% (141,038) of patients were waiting more than 9 weeks for a diagnostic test.
38.6% (87,897) of patients were waiting more than 26 weeks for a diagnostic test.
471,185 diagnostic tests were reported on at hospitals during the quarter ending September 2025. Of these, 27.4% (129,080) were urgent tests and the remaining 72.6% (342,105) were routine tests.
Of the 129,080 urgent diagnostic tests, 73.8% (95,238) were reported on within 2 days.
Figures sourced from encompass are considered to be ‘official statistics in development’. Therefore, caution must be exercised when using these figures.
On 30 September 2025, there were 227,674 patients waiting for a diagnostic test.
Note: The grey box indicates the time period when HSC Trusts transitioned to the encompass patient record system.
This line chart shows that the number of patients waiting rose steadily from 59,575 on 30 June 2010 to 188,850 on 30 September 2023, the last quarter for which all data was sourced from legacy sources and for which overall figures for all five HSC Trusts were published.
227,674 patients were waiting on 30 September 2025, which is the first quarter following the encompass transition period for which validated data for all five HSC Trusts are available.
Figures sourced from encompass are considered to be ‘official statistics in development’. Therefore, caution must be exercised when using these figures.
On 30 September 2025, the largest waiting lists were for Non-Obstetric Ultrasound (43,256 patients, 19.0% of the waiting list) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (30,550 patients, 13.4% of the waiting list).
Pure Tone Audiometry, Echocardiography and Plain Film X-Rays each also account for over 5.0% of the waiting list.
The bar chart above shows the number of patients waiting for each diagnostic service on 30 September 2025. Only specialties with at least 2,000 patients waiting are shown.
Pure Tone Audiometry data sourced from encompass currently account for appointments differently to legacy (pre-encompass) data and are higher than in previous quarters.
Echocardiography data sourced from encompass are currently under review.
Figures sourced from encompass are considered to be ‘official statistics in development’. Therefore, caution must be exercised when using these figures.
Please note that in the quarterly waiting time statistics publications for quarter ending 30 June 2025 and subsequent quarters, trend information regarding overall performance against targets will be suspended while figures sourced from encompass remain ‘official statistics in development’. Trend information derived using pre-encompass (legacy) data sources for performance against targets are included in the publication for quarter ending 31 March 2025 and earlier publications.
Discussion of the current performance against targets by Trust, and overall, now follows.
The draft diagnostic waiting times target states that 75% of patients should wait no longer than 9 weeks for a diagnostic test, with no patient waiting longer than 26 weeks.
This target was introduced in 2016/17.
The stacked bar charts above illustrate the percentage and number of patients waiting less than 9 weeks for a diagnostic test in each HSC Trust on 30 September 2025. Some 38.1% (86,636 of 227,674 patients) were waiting less than 9 weeks for a diagnostic test and 38.6% (87,897 of 227,674 patients) were waiting longer than 26 weeks.
No HSC Trust met either of the 9 week or 26 week targets, with
between 42.3% and 68.0% of patients waiting longer than 9 weeks and
between 11.9% and 45.6% waiting longer than 26 weeks.
Figures sourced from encompass are considered to be ‘official statistics in development’. Therefore, caution must be exercised when using these figures.
Exclusions From This Analysis
Data on diagnostic reporting is currently only collected by the Department of Health for a subset of imaging and physiological measurement tests. Day case endoscopies are reported on the day of the test and are therefore excluded.
Although statistics in this section can be considered as a general indicator of reporting performance, they do not represent all patients coming off waiting lists above.
There were 471,185 diagnostic tests reported on during the quarter
ending 30 September 2025, of which 27.4% (129,080) were urgent tests and
the remaining 72.6% (342,105) were routine tests.
Note: The grey box indicates the time period when HSC Trusts transitioned to the encompass patient record system.
The stacked bar chart above illustrates the number of tests reported and the number classified as urgent between June 2015 and September 2025. Figures sourced from encompass are not directly comparable with legacy (pre-encompass) data.
Aside from a large drop in the number of tests reported during the four quarters from June 2020 to March 2021, the number of tests reported each quarter rose gradually from 371,390 during the quarter ending June 2015 to 435,250 during the quarter ending September 2023. Over the same time period, the number of urgent tests reported rose steadily from 42,601 to 99,430 during the quarter ending September 2023.
The reported proportion of urgent tests was 27.4% (129,080 of 471,185) for quarter ending September 2025, which is the first quarter following the encompass transition period for which validated data for all five HSC Trusts are available.
Figures sourced from encompass are considered to be ‘official statistics in development’. Therefore, caution must be exercised when using these figures.
Exclusions From This Analysis
Data on diagnostic reporting turnaround times is currently only collected by the Department of Health for a subset of imaging and physiological measurement tests. Day case endoscopies are reported on the day of the test and are therefore also excluded.
Although statistics in this section can be considered as a general indicator of reporting performance, they do not represent all patients coming off waiting lists above.
Please note that in the quarterly waiting time statistics publications for quarter ending 30 June 2025 and subsequent quarters, trend information regarding overall performance against targets will be suspended while figures sourced from encompass remain ‘official statistics in development’. Trend information derived using pre-encompass (legacy) data sources for performance against targets are included in the publication for quarter ending 31 March 2025 and earlier publications.
Discussion of the current performance against targets by Trust, and overall, now follows.
The draft reporting target states that all urgent diagnostic tests should be reported on within 2 days of the test being undertaken. This target was introduced in 2012/13. Of the 129,080 urgent diagnostic tests reported during the quarter ending September 2025, 73.8% (95,238) were reported on within 2 days.
The stacked bar charts above illustrate the percentage and number of tests reported within 2 days in each HSC Trust during the quarter ending 30 September 2025. No HSC Trust met the target during this quarter, with 48.3% to 88.6% of tests being reported within 2 days.
The sources for the data contained in this release are the quarterly Departmental SDR1 and DRTT returns.
SDR1 returns detail diagnostic waiting times and are provided by each of the Health and Social Care Trusts. Diagnostic reporting turnaround time information is detailed in the DRTT return also provided by the Health and Social Care Trusts.
HSC Trusts use the Northern Ireland Picture Archive and Communications System (NIPACS) as the mechanism for managing imaging services. Strategic Planning and Performance Group in the Department of Health has carried out a validation exercise with Trusts to address any data quality issues.
Data for the South Eastern HSC Trust from 9 November 2023 onwards, for the Belfast HSC Trust from 6 June 2024 onwards, for the Northern HSC Trust from 7 November 2024 onwards and for the Southern and Western HSC Trusts from 8 May onwards are sourced from ‘encompass’, which is a new electronic patient record system. The data are considered to be ‘official statistics in development’.
A diagnostic service provides an examination, test, or procedure used to identify a person’s disease or condition and which allows a medical diagnosis to be made. There are three categories of diagnostic test: Imaging test; Physiological Measurement test; and Day Case Endoscopy.
The diagnostic waiting time relates to all tests with a diagnostic element. Included are tests that are part diagnostic and subsequently part therapeutic. A therapeutic procedure is defined as a procedure which involves actual treatment of a person’s disease, condition or injury. Patients currently admitted to a hospital bed and waiting for an emergency procedure, patients waiting for a planned procedure, patients waiting for procedures as part of screening programmes, and purely therapeutic procedures are excluded from the waiting times target and from this analysis.
The waiting time for a diagnostic service commences on the date on which the referral for the service is received by the Health Care provider and stops on the date on which the test is performed. Patients who cannot attend have their waiting time recorded from the date they informed the HSC Trust that they could not attend, while patients who miss their appointment have their waiting time adjusted to commence on the date of the missed appointment. Time bands shown relate to the number of completed weeks a patient has been waiting for a diagnostic service. For example, a patient waiting exactly 6 weeks would be included in the 0-6 week time band and a patient waiting 6 weeks and 1 day would be included in the >6-9 week (greater than 6 weeks but waiting no longer than 9 weeks) time band. This also applies to the number of days waited for a diagnostic turnaround.
Some patients will be on more than one waiting list or be on the same waiting list for more than one diagnostic test due to having multiple conditions. Such patients are counted more than once depending on how many times they are waiting.
The diagnostic reporting turnaround time is the time interval between the completion of the diagnostic test and the results of that test being verified or dispatched to the referring clinician in Northern Ireland, whichever is applicable.
Diagnostic reporting times apply to a selected subset of imaging and physiological measurement diagnostic services. These services are: Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Computerised Tomography; Non-Obstetric Ultrasound; Barium Studies; DEXA Scan; Radio-Nuclide Imaging; Pure Tone Audiometry; Echocardiography; Perfusion Studies; Peripheral Neurophysiology; Sleep Studies; and Urodynamics Pressures and Flows and Plain Film X-rays. Day case endoscopies are reported on the day of the test and are, therefore, excluded from diagnostic reporting times.
Two major changes in the data collection of diagnostic waiting lists and diagnostic reporting times occurred in 2010/11 and 2015/16 respectively. Prior to 2010/11, diagnostic waiting information was collected and presented relating to 16 selected diagnostic services, after which the department commenced collection of waiting times data for all diagnostic services. From 2015/16 Plain Film X-Rays were included in reporting data.
Due to these changes, it is only possible to provide trend data from 2010/11 onwards for diagnostic waiting lists and from 2015/16 onwards for diagnostic reporting times.
Figures for reporting years prior to these are still published in the accompanying CSV files, however users should exercise caution in how they are used and are advised against making any comparisons that cross these time points.
A number of diagnostic services may not be provided at all of the five HSC Trusts in Northern Ireland. In this situation, patients from one HSC Trust area will be waiting to be seen at a service provided at another HSC Trust. Users should therefore be cautious in how they use these data. For example, they should not be used to calculate the total number of patients waiting per head of the population residing within each HSC Trust area. Neither should the actual number of patients waiting longer than the recommended waiting time be used as an indicator of poor performance within an individual HSC Trust. Users who require an indication of the latter are advised to refer to the commentary section of the publication which provides an indication of the percentage of total waiters that have been waiting over the maximum recommended waiting times, within each HSC Trust.
A number of the diagnostic services, particularly endoscopies, reported on the SDR1 returns are managed as an admission: either an inpatient admission or a day case. As such, they will be included in both the inpatient and day case waiting time and diagnostic waiting time figures. Due to the risk of multiple counting, these two sets of data should not be combined to give an estimate of the total number of patients waiting for admission or a diagnostic service.
The diagnostic waiting times and diagnostic reporting turnaround times returns (SDR1 Parts 1 and 2, DRTT) include patients living outside Northern Ireland and privately funded patients waiting for diagnostic services in Health Service hospitals in Northern Ireland.
The information on diagnostic waiting and reporting times contained within this publication is currently under review. The Department is considering how this information is sourced and the validation procedures that are carried out with a view to improving the quality. All quality issues identified as part of this review are being addressed on an ongoing basis.
The Department of Health’s policy is to publish revised figures with subsequent statistical releases unless it is decided that the magnitude of the change merits earlier notification.
Due to technical issues, data for cardiology physiological measurement diagnostic tests from the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children have not been available since February 2020. The impact of this on the statistics in this report is minimal. At February 2020, there were 321 patients waiting for this service, this was approximately 7% of the total waiting for Belfast HSC Trust’s cardiology service.
Technical guidance and definitions, as well as notes on how to use the date contained within this statistical release are available at the following link:
https://www.health-ni.gov.uk/articles/diagnostic-waiting-times
Data detailed in this publication are also available in Excel format to aid secondary analysis.
Excel files are available to download at the following link:
Statistics on waiting times for inpatients, outpatients, cancer and emergency care are available at the following link:
https://www.health-ni.gov.uk/topics/doh-statistics-and-research/hospital-waiting-times-statistics
Please contact Hospital Waits Information Branch for assistance with accessibility requirements or alternative formats.
Email: statistics@health-ni.gov.uk
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