What this page does and doesn't show
⚠️ Covers public hospital elective surgery and emergency department figures only. It does not show waits to see a specialist in an outpatient clinic, private specialist waits, or how long you will wait. Figures are hospital-level summaries for a past reporting period; "n/p" means the value was not published (for example, too few cases) — see the notes under each table.
How to read the tables
- Median wait (days): the number of days within which half of the patients were admitted for surgery. A median can hide long waits for some patients.
- Within recommended time: the percentage of patients admitted within the clinically recommended time for their urgency category — Category 1 (urgent) within 30 days, Category 2 (semi-urgent) within 90 days, Category 3 (non-urgent) within 365 days (AIHW). AIHW reports this by urgency category only, not by specialty.
- Waited more than 365 days: the percentage of patients who waited longer than a year for surgery.
- Emergency department: time measures describe patients who left the emergency department (admitted, transferred or discharged). Triage categories run from Resuscitation (immediate) to Non-urgent.
- State and National columns show the same measure for the hospital's state or territory and for Australia, for the same reporting period.
Full definitions and technical notes are on AIHW MyHospitals.
Waiting to see a specialist?
Waits for public specialist outpatient appointments are not in this national dataset. Some states publish their own. For example, Queensland Health's performance site reports the percentage of patients seen within the clinically recommended time for their urgency category. Check your own state or territory health department for equivalent information. Our referral categories guide explains what Category 1, 2 and 3 mean and links to each state’s published data.