Elective surgery waiting times 2017–18

Performance indicator: Waiting times for elective surgery

Waiting times for elective surgery are an indicator of the provision of timely care and are included as an NHA performance indicator in the outcome area of Australians receive appropriate high quality and affordable hospital and hospital related care (COAG 2011).

This performance indicator can be related to the National Health Performance framework dimension ‘Accessibility’ within the domain ‘Health System Performance’.

The indicator reports on the 50th percentile (median, or time within which 50% of pateints were admitted) and 90th percentile waiting times (or time within which 90% of patients were admitted) for elective surgery in public hospitals, by surgical procedure, and overall. It includes disaggregation by states and territories, public hospital peer group and Indigenous status.

In AIHW reports before 2014–15, this information was presented using the previous peer group classification. The change from the previous peer group classification to the current peer group classification has resulted in a ‘break in series’ for data disaggregated by peer group. Therefore, the performance indicator information presented here by public hospital peer group is not directly comparable with information presented in AIHW reports before 2014–15.

See Table 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 and S4.1 for caveat infomation on these data. Available to download from the data section of this report.