Tens of thousands of patients across Scotland are being treated outside their health board areas, new figures have revealed.

Last year, more than 225,000 people – requiring a variety of treatments – were taken to different parts of the country for care.

That accounts for around 10 per cent of all patients in 2015/16, a figure that doesn’t include those who sought private care or went to the National Waiting Times Centre at the Golden Jubilee in Glasgow.

It also means more than 600 people a day are travelling sometimes hundreds of miles to access the NHS.

It is the first time ISD Scotland has published statistics on “cross boundary flows”, and covers new outpatient attendances, day cases, elective and non-elective patients.

Geographically, there is huge disparity in the number of patients forced to travel, particularly in smaller health board areas with fewer specialist services.

However, the data also reveals that 14.5 per cent of new outpatient attendances in major boards like Fife were sent elsewhere, along with 20.8 per cent in Highland.

In the Borders, nearly half of elective patients are sent away, as are more than a third in NHS Lanarkshire.

Scottish Conservative shadow health secretary Donald Cameron said:

“There will always be cases where travelling is the best thing medically for a patient, just as there will also be those who choose to go elsewhere to access quicker care.

“However, these figures reveal how hundreds of patients every day are being inconvenienced by having to travel considerable distances.

“That should tell the SNP that it needs to think again about the level of service delivered in some areas.

“We know the NHS is hard-pressed under this Scottish Government, with staff overstretched, wards full to the brim, and GP practices unable to fill posts.

“If that now means more patients are being forced to go to other parts of the country for treatment, it’s an extremely bad reflection on the SNP’s handling of Scotland’s health service.”