About the data
Every figure on ShortestWait comes from official NHS England statistics, published monthly and reused under the Open Government Licence. This page explains what is measured, how we calculate the numbers, and what they can and cannot tell you.
What is measured
NHS England's Consultant-led Referral to Treatment (RTT) waiting times count how long patients wait from being referred, usually by a GP, to the start of consultant-led treatment. Every NHS trust in England reports them each month, and so does every independent provider that treats NHS-funded patients.
The headline measure is patients still waiting at the end of each month, called incomplete pathways. For each provider and specialty, NHS England publishes how many patients had waited up to 1 week, 1 to 2 weeks, and so on in weekly bands up to 104 weeks. We also show how long patients who started treatment that month had waited.
The figures are by specialty, which NHS England calls treatment function, not by individual operation. Eighteen specialties are reported separately, and five "Other" groups collect the rest.
How we calculate the figures
- Median wait. Half of the patients waiting had waited less than this. We estimate it from the weekly bands the same way NHS England does, assuming patients are spread evenly within a band.
- 92% within. The wait within which 92 in every 100 patients fall. The NHS Constitution standard is that 92% of patients waiting should have waited less than 18 weeks.
- Within 18 weeks. The share of patients who had waited 18 weeks or less.
- Rankings include providers with at least 50 patients waiting in that specialty, ordered by median wait, then by the 92nd percentile.
We check our England totals against NHS England's own published series every month. From April 2019 to August 2026, our median agrees within 0.03 weeks, the 92nd percentile within 0.08 weeks, and the share within 18 weeks within 0.06 percentage points. Our waiting-list totals run about 0.5% higher, because we count every patient on English providers' lists, while NHS England's England series counts by commissioner.
What the figures do not tell you
- They are not a prediction of your own wait. Patients are prioritised by clinical need, and waits within a specialty vary by treatment.
- NHS trusts report one figure for all their hospitals, so a trust's wait may differ between its sites.
- Some providers miss a month's submission. We show their last figures with a note, rather than estimating.
- Waits for a first outpatient appointment are not published separately. NHS England's My Planned Care site shows trust-reported estimates.
Coverage and updates
We hold 89 months of figures, from April 2019 to August 2026, and 532 providers reported in the latest month. NHS England publishes new figures at 9:30am on the second Thursday of each month, about six weeks after the month they cover. We check for new and revised files every day.
Provider names, addresses and sites come from the NHS Organisation Data Service. Distances are calculated from postcodes using postcodes.io, which is based on the ONS Postcode Directory.
Licence and attribution
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Source: NHS England. ShortestWait is independent and is not part of, or endorsed by, the NHS.
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