If your planned surgery is cancelled or postponed

What the site does not hold

Surgery Waits has no record of a cancellation, a postponement or a patient's waiting list entry. The site cannot say why an operation moved, how often it happens at a hospital or what a postponement does to a listing.

What a published wait counts

A published waiting time counts the time a patient spends on the waiting list for surgery. The figures do not show how a hospital counts a postponement. A patient can ask the hospital how it counts one.

Long waits in the published figures

A hospital and surgery page shows the share of patients who waited longer than 365 days when the hospital published it. A wait longer than 365 days counts in that share even when the median is short.

• The longest published waits

Questions to ask the hospital

A patient can put these questions to the hospital's booking office, to the treating specialist or to a general practitioner.

• What is the new date, or when will the hospital give me one?
• Does my urgency category stay the same?
• How does the hospital count the time between the cancelled date and the new one?
• Does any pre-admission appointment need to be repeated?
• Whom do I contact if my condition changes before the new date?