Pain Management at NHS Orkney
Waits here have been falling, down by around 5 weeks over three years.
No Scottish provider publishes a price for pain management treatment, so only the NHS side of this comparison exists.
NHS Orkney covers Kirkwall and Stromness and the surrounding area.
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Waiting on the NHS
Pain Management
NHS Orkney
How long people currently on the list have waited so far. Someone referred last week counts as a one-week wait, so this reads low too — just less so.
14 weeks
Median wait
Half have waited less than this so far — about 3 months.
20 weeks
90th percentile wait
1 in 10 have already waited longer than this — about 5 months.
Treat these numbers with caution. They are based on just 19 patients, which is too few to give a reliable median. Boards this small often send patients to a neighbouring board for treatment — ask your GP where you’d actually be referred.
Which way it’s going
Median wait has fallen from 12 weeks to 7 weeks over the last 33 months.
This tracks the same measure you have selected above. PHS compute these medians from exact days while the headline figure is derived from wait bands, so the last point sits near but not exactly on it.
How does your own wait compare?
A median describes the middle. If you’ve been waiting a long time, it probably describes nothing like your experience.
This is the wait from being listed for treatment, not from seeing your GP. The outpatient wait to see the specialist comes first and no figure is published for it here.
Inpatient and day case figures for June 2026, based on 19 people on the list, published by Public Health Scotland. Derived from banded figures, so they are close estimates rather than exact. Your own wait depends on clinical urgency.
Paying privately
Pain Management
£191–£275
A first private appointment
Across 4 Scottish providers. This is the consultant's fee for the appointment itself — not any tests, and not treatment.
No price collected for Pain Management treatment itself. Every price here is read by hand from a hospital’s own published list, and no Scottish provider publishes one for this specialty that we’ve found.
The NHS figures beside this are real and complete. If you know of a provider publishing prices for this specialty, that’s genuinely useful to hear.
Median wait: 14 weeks.
Based on fewer than 30 patients — see the caution note above.
Paying to find out, rather than paying to fix it
Some people pay privately for a consultation or a scan, then take the results back to the NHS. It costs hundreds rather than thousands, and what it buys is a diagnosis — not a place further up any queue.
Initial consultant appointment
4 providers: Spire Edinburgh Hospitals, Ross Hall Hospital, Albyn Hospital, Kings Park Hospital
£191–£275
Ultrasound scan
1 provider: Nuffield Health Edinburgh Hospital
On the NHS here: 149 people waiting, median 27 days, 33% over six weeks.
£330
MRI scan (one area)
2 providers: Nuffield Health Glasgow Hospital, Spire Edinburgh Hospitals
On the NHS here: 105 people waiting, median 26 days, 26% over six weeks.
£470–£625
CT scan (one area)
1 provider: Nuffield Health Glasgow Hospital
On the NHS here: 22 people waiting, median 8 days, 0% over six weeks.
£650
NHS diagnostic figures are for NHS Orkney as at 2026-03, and count people currently on the list rather than how long completed patients waited. That dataset is published a few months behind the treatment waits above.
A scan does not change your position on the NHS list by itself. What it can do is establish how urgent your case is, and urgency is what determines priority. Whether a private result is accepted, and what happens next, is a matter for your GP and your health board — ask them before spending anything. Scan prices usually exclude the consultant appointment needed to refer you and to interpret the result.