The number of Scots resorting to paying for knee and hip replacements has more than doubled over the past five years as a result of record waiting lists.
About a third of hip replacements are now carried out privately, new analysis has shown, triple the rate recorded before the pandemic.
The procedures are costing the Scottish public about £61 million, as NHS patients face waiting lists of years for non-urgent operations.
Official figures analysed by Our Scottish Future, a think tank, show that 2,824 Scots paid for private hip replacement in 2022, compared with 1,099 five years earlier. For knee procedures, the figure reached 1,493 patients in 2022, up from 690 in 2018.
Almost 16,000 hip and knee operations were carried out in Scotland in
