Median waiting time for elective surgery in public hospitals.

Median waiting times are rounded to the nearest whole day.

Waiting times are calculated for patients whose reason for removal was:

• For surgical specialty and indicator procedures:

1. Admitted as an elective patient for awaited procedure by or on behalf of this hospital or the state/territory.

• For clinical urgency categories:

1. Admitted as an elective patient for awaited procedure by or on behalf of this hospital or the state/territory, or

2. Admitted as emergency patient for awaited procedure by or on behalf of this hospital or the state/territory.

For the purposes of reporting by urgency category, patients are reported as the final urgency category they were when treated.

Exclusions

The calculation of waiting time excludes:

1. All days the patient was waiting with a less urgent elective surgery urgency category than their urgency category when removed from the list. When a patient's urgency category changes, existing NMDS business rules will apply.
2. All patients who:
   • Were transferred to another hospital’s elective surgery waiting list
   • Were treated elsewhere but not on behalf of the hospital
   • Were not contactable for booking the surgery or at booked time of surgery
   • Died prior to receiving their surgery
   • Declined surgery.

Data suppression

Results are not shown if the number of surgeries is fewer than 10.

For annual counts, where data from one or more urgency categories or quarters are suppressed, the annual total is reported less the suppressed value. In addition, if an urgency category is suppressed, it is removed from the relevant quarterly total.

For clinical urgency categories annual data are sourced from National Elective Surgery Waiting Time Data Collection and quarterly data from National Elective Surgery Target  Data.

For surgical specialty and indicator procedures annual data are sourced from National Elective Surgery Waiting Time Data Collection.

n (number of observations) x p (percentile value divided by 100) = i (integer) + f (fractional part of n x p)

• If n x p is an integer, then the percentile value will correspond to the average of the values for the i^th and (i+1)^th observations.
• If n x p is not an integer, then the percentile value will correspond to the value for the (i+1)^th observation.
• For example, if there were 100 hospital separations, the median will correspond to the average time for the 50^th and 51^st observations. If there were 101 observations, the median will correspond to the time for the 51^st observation.

Waiting time is calculated by states and territories by subtracting the listing date for care from the removal date, minus any days the patient was not ready for care and/or waiting with a less urgent clinical urgency category than their clinical urgency category at removal.

There are inconsistencies in application of urgency categories between and within states and territories which impact on the comparability of results.