Waiting times by surgical specialty

This page presents information on how long patients waited for admission from elective surgery waiting lists based on the area of clinical expertise of the doctor performing the elective (planned) surgery.

Explore the data

Explore elective surgery waiting times by surgical speciality for 2024–25 and for other recent years in the data visualisation below.

In 2024–25:

• the area of surgical speciality with the highest median (50th percentile) and highest 90th percentile waiting times was Otolaryngology, head and neck surgery (99 days and 397, respectively)
• the area of surgical speciality with the lowest median and 90th percentile waiting times was Cardiothoracic surgery (20 days and 99 days, respectively)
• the surgical specialities that had the highest proportions of patients who waited more than 365 days to be admitted were Otolaryngology, head and neck surgery and Orthopaedic surgery (14% and 11%, respectively).

Changes over time

Between 2020–21 and 2024–25:

• the median (50th percentile) waiting time decreased for 7 of the 12 areas of surgical specialty
• the 90th percentile waiting time decreased for 10 of the 12 surgical specialties, with Neurosurgery having the largest decrease of 65 days – from 296 days in 2020–21 to 231 days in 2024–25
• the proportion of patients who waited more than 365 days to be admitted decreased for 9 of the 12 areas of surgical specialty.