My Medical Gateway has made the front page of The Herald after research conducted by MMG uncovered a striking gap in Scotland’s understanding of what happens to patients who leave NHS waiting lists to seek treatment privately.
Under the front-page headline “Scotland cannot track private hip patients”, The Herald reported exclusively on figures obtained through Freedom of Information requests by MMG, revealing both the continuing scale of hip-replacement waiting times and the absence of reliable national data showing how many patients are abandoning NHS queues to obtain treatment elsewhere.
The full story, continued prominently on page six under the headline “Hip surgery patients going private ‘cannot be tracked’ as NHS waiting lists soar”, reports that the median completed wait for a hip replacement in Scotland was 229 days — around seven-and-a-half months — in 2025/26. The average wait was longer still at 270 days, or almost nine months.
Despite those lengthy waits, MMG’s investigation found that Scotland cannot reliably establish how many patients ultimately decide they can wait no longer and seek treatment privately.
Public Health Scotland introduced a national code in July 2025 allowing health boards to record patients removed from waiting lists because they had sought treatment outside the NHS. But The Herald reports that only one NHS board is currently using that removal reason when submitting patient records. The resulting figures therefore cannot provide a reliable Scotland-wide picture of the movement from NHS waiting lists into private healthcare.
The scale of the underlying pressure remains considerable. There were 9,082 hip-replacement admissions in Scotland during the 12 months to 30 April 2026, while 8,537 patients were still waiting for the procedure at the end of that period.
The Herald specifically credited My Medical Gateway with obtaining the figures under Freedom of Information laws, describing MMG as “a healthcare marketplace which connects UK patients with private hospitals in Europe”.
The newspaper also carried MMG’s warning that the consequences of lengthy surgical waits extend far beyond the waiting-list statistics themselves.
Sara Gezdari, MMG’s chief spokesperson, told The Herald that delayed treatment can mean prolonged pain and loss of mobility, but can also result in lost income, cancelled contracts and mounting financial pressure. She also highlighted the wider economic consequences when people are unable to work at full capacity while waiting for surgery.
The findings go directly to one of the issues MMG was created to address.
For patients living with pain and facing many months before treatment, choosing private healthcare can increasingly become a practical necessity rather than a luxury. Yet MMG’s research suggests that even the movement of patients out of NHS care and into private treatment is not currently being captured reliably at national level.
MMG provides a structured marketplace through which UK patients can compare fully accredited hospitals across Europe, fixed-price Treatment Packages and treatment options in one place, with consultant-led treatment available within six weeks.
The prominence given to MMG’s findings by The Herald brings an important issue into the national conversation: as pressure on elective surgery continues, patients are already making their own decisions about where and how to obtain treatment — but the healthcare system does not yet have a reliable picture of how many are leaving NHS waiting lists to do so.
About My Medical Gateway
My Medical Gateway (MMG) is a healthcare marketplace connecting UK patients with fully accredited private hospitals across Europe. The platform enables patients to compare providers and fixed-price Treatment Packages and access consultant-led care with guaranteed treatment within six weeks.
MMG provides a structured treatment pathway under English law designed to make accessing private healthcare abroad simpler, safer and more transparent, from treatment selection and diagnostics through to booking, treatment and post-operative follow-up.
Learn more about MMG: www.mymedicalgateway.com
About MMG: www.mymedicalgateway.com/about
Leave a Reply