Cancer surgery waiting times available on MyHospitals website

New information on cancer surgery waiting times has been made available today on MyHospitals, a website managed by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW).

The website presents cancer surgery waiting times for public hospitals, showing the median waiting times (in days) for selected cancer types in each hospital.

Waiting times refer to the time spent on a waiting list by people who received elective surgery for selected cancer types between 1 July 2010 and 30 June 2011.

The types of cancer for which waiting times are shown are: bladder cancer, bowel cancer, breast cancer, gynaecological cancer, kidney cancer, lung cancer, melanoma and prostate cancer.

The median waiting time is the number of days within which half of all patients at a particular hospital received their surgery.

Waiting times for various types of cancer surgery differ depending on the assessed clinical urgency. For example lung and breast cancer generally have shorter median waiting times for surgery than prostate cancer.

Hospitals that do not have cancer surgery waiting time data presented might not undertake cancer surgery or only have a very small number of admissions.

The website also presents information for each hospital on the total number of admissions for elective cancer surgery across the selected cancer types.

MyHospitals is an Australian Government initiative to inform the community about hospitals, by making it easier for people to access information about how individual hospitals are performing. 

The AIHW is a major national agency set up by the Australian Government to provide reliable, regular and relevant information and statistics on Australia's health and welfare.

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