How long will I wait for surgery?

What public hospitals near you published, including across state borders.

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Pick a surgery, then a state, for the hospitals ranked by median wait.
Pick a hospital for every surgery it reports, and for the nearest alternatives that published a figure.

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How that works

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Reference period 2024–25 (1 July 2024 to 30 June 2025) · released 28 May 2026

What this site does

Public hospitals across Australia report how long people waited for planned surgery. The figures are published once a year, hospital by hospital and surgery by surgery, but not in a form that lets you compare the hospitals near you — especially across a state border. This site does that, and nothing else.

Every number here is a published government figure, shown with the period it covers and the date it was released. Nothing is estimated, crowd-sourced or sponsored, and no hospital is called best: the order is the measured number and nothing else.

Start here

Every surgery type — 151 surgery types with national and state figures.
Every public hospital — 293 hospitals, listed by state.
Every state and territory — state medians, hospital rankings and cross-border comparisons.
Urgency categories — what Category 1, 2 and 3 mean, and how often each hospital treats people on time.
Guides — referrals, cancellations, and public versus private waiting.
Methodology — where the numbers come from and what they cannot tell you.

Public hospital surgery waiting times in Australia

The twenty most-reported surgery types, with the national median wait for each in 2024–25. Every surgery links to its full comparison — state by state, then hospital by hospital.

The twenty surgery types most public hospitals reported, 2024–25. Every figure was released on 2026-05-28.
Surgery	National median wait	Surgeries	Hospitals reporting
Skin lesion removal	26 days	59852 surgeries	235
Hernia repair	86 days	12195 surgeries	221
Inguinal hernia repair	73 days	16694 surgeries	217
Carpal tunnel surgery	71 days	9994 surgeries	204
Haemorrhoid surgery	63 days	4759 surgeries	204
Gallbladder removal	48 days	18067 surgeries	199
Laparoscopy	69 days	9403 surgeries	196
Toenail surgery	48 days	1323 surgeries	192
Circumcision	80 days	3291 surgeries	181
Arthroscopy	78 days	8779 surgeries	177
Dilatation and curettage	28 days	36667 surgeries	175
Ganglion - excision of	105 days	1191 surgeries	170
Hydrocele - repair of	95 days	1477 surgeries	168
LLETZ procedure	33 days	4937 surgeries	168
Hysterectomy	74 days	9163 surgeries	164
Trigger finger release	90 days	1696 surgeries	161
Salpingo-oophorectomy/oophorectomy/ovarian cystectomy	56 days	4989 surgeries	160
Cystoscopy	26 days	57307 surgeries	156
Dupuytren's contracture surgery	150 days	1777 surgeries	154
ACL reconstruction	81 days	4122 surgeries	150

By state and territory

Each state and territory's published medians, 2024–25: how many hospitals report, and the state's shortest and longest median across its surgery types. Every figure was released on 2026-05-28.
State or territory	Hospitals reporting	Surgery types	Shortest state median	Longest state median
New South Wales	98	107	2 days — fracture non-union - treatment of	348 days — ptosis - repair of
Victoria	48	107	2 days — curettage and evacuation of uterus	606 days — rhinoplasty
Queensland	54	89	4 days — curettage and evacuation of uterus	363 days — rhinoplasty
Western Australia	40	72	6 days — curettage and evacuation of uterus	216 days — turbinectomy
South Australia	40	55	5 days — curettage and evacuation of uterus	497 days — breast reduction
Tasmania	4	24	22 days — breast lump removal	271 days — septoplasty
Australian Capital Territory	3	5	133 days — inguinal hernia repair	388 days — knee replacement
Northern Territory	6	13	1 day — curettage and evacuation of uterus	377 days — eardrum repair

Three numbers worth knowing

The longest published median wait in 2024–25 was 1236 days — rhinoplasty at Box Hill Hospital — see the 50 longest waits.
Crossing a state border saved up to 427 days on the same surgery at hospitals 95 km apart — see where the border cuts the wait.
The biggest state-level move year on year was blepharoplasty in Victoria: 356 days to 189 days — see where waits rose and fell.

What the figures cannot tell you

These are medians of surgery that has already happened, across all urgency categories together. They are not a live queue and not a prediction of your own wait. Your wait depends on the urgency category your treating specialist assigns you after you are seen in a clinic, and on the wait to be seen in that clinic in the first place — which is not in this data.

Public hospitals only. Private hospitals do not report to this collection, so their waiting times cannot be compared here.