# Surgery Waits > Surgery Waits shows how long patients waited for planned surgery at public hospitals in Australia, by hospital, surgery, state and urgency category. Every figure comes from a dataset that publicdata.au serves, and /data-api/credits.json names each one. The national figures on this site cover 2024–25 and were released on 19 August 2026. ## Key pages - [Home](https://surgerywaits.au/) - [Surgery](https://surgerywaits.au/surgery/) - [Hospitals](https://surgerywaits.au/hospitals/) - [States](https://surgerywaits.au/state/) - [Methodology](https://surgerywaits.au/methodology/): How Surgery Waits gets its planned surgery waiting times, handles figures the publisher withholds, ranks hospitals, finds nearby hospitals and decides which pages search engines may list. - [Guides](https://surgerywaits.au/guides/): Plain explanations of what a planned surgery waiting time measures, what the figures leave out and which questions a patient can put to a hospital. - [Compare near you](https://surgerywaits.au/compare/) - [For general practitioners](https://surgerywaits.au/gp/) ## Guides - [How to check your place on a surgery waiting list](https://surgerywaits.au/guides/check-your-place-on-the-waiting-list/): Surgery Waits cannot show a place on a list. This guide says what the figures show and lists questions for a hospital. - [Referral to a different hospital](https://surgerywaits.au/guides/referral-to-another-hospital/): The site lists nearby public hospitals, including hospitals across a state border. This guide says what the lists hold and what the figures leave out. - [Public and private waiting times](https://surgerywaits.au/guides/public-and-private-waiting/): The figures cover public hospitals only. This guide says what that means for a comparison. - [If your planned surgery is cancelled or postponed](https://surgerywaits.au/guides/if-your-surgery-is-cancelled/): The site holds no figure for cancelled surgery. This guide says what a published wait counts and lists questions for a hospital. - [Emergency department waiting times](https://surgerywaits.au/guides/emergency-department-waiting-times/): The site publishes no emergency department figures. This guide says what its waiting times measure instead. ## About, data and agents - [About](https://surgerywaits.au/about/): Who builds and runs Surgery Waits, why it exists, how its data reaches the page and how to get in touch. - [Data and attribution](https://surgerywaits.au/data/): Every dataset behind Surgery Waits, with its publisher, version, release date, licence and citation, and how to reuse the data. - [Privacy](https://surgerywaits.au/privacy/) - [Terms of use](https://surgerywaits.au/terms/) - [Accessibility](https://surgerywaits.au/accessibility/) - [Corrections](https://surgerywaits.au/corrections/) - [For people building agents](https://surgerywaits.au/agents/): Which files an agent should read on Surgery Waits, their licences, the content signal in robots.txt, how the site serves and caches files, and how to cite a figure. ## Data files - [Counts and scope](https://surgerywaits.au/data-api/index.json): The counts and the scope of the data. - [Credits](https://surgerywaits.au/data-api/credits.json): The publisher, licence, version and citation of each source. - [Rules](https://surgerywaits.au/data-api/rules.json): The rules that the site applies to the data. - [Surgeries](https://surgerywaits.au/data-api/surgeries.json): Each surgery category that has a page, with its slug. - [Hospitals](https://surgerywaits.au/data-api/hospitals.json): Each hospital that has a page, with its slug. - [Health services](https://surgerywaits.au/data-api/health-services.json): Each health service that has a page, with its slug. - [OpenAPI description](https://surgerywaits.au/data-api/openapi.json): The OpenAPI 3.1 description of the data files. ## Schemas - [common.schema.json](https://surgerywaits.au/contract/common.schema.json): Definitions that the other schemas in this folder share, such as dates, periods, identifiers, figures, ranks, measures and sources. It describes no file of its own. - [credits.schema.json](https://surgerywaits.au/contract/credits.schema.json): The file credits.json holds the attribution and citation publicdata.au publishes for each source version the build read. - [health-service.schema.json](https://surgerywaits.au/contract/health-service.schema.json): The file `health-services/.json` holds one local hospital network and its public hospitals that have a page. - [health-service-index.schema.json](https://surgerywaits.au/contract/health-service-index.schema.json): The file health-services.json holds one row for each local hospital network that has a page. - [hospital.schema.json](https://surgerywaits.au/contract/hospital.schema.json): The file `hospitals/.json` holds one public hospital, its newest figures for each category and its nearest open hospitals. - [hospital-index.schema.json](https://surgerywaits.au/contract/hospital-index.schema.json): The file hospitals.json holds one compact row for each public hospital that has a page, for lists, search and the compare tool. - [index.schema.json](https://surgerywaits.au/contract/index.schema.json): The file index.json holds what the build holds, the newest period and release of each table, and the scope. - [manifest.schema.json](https://surgerywaits.au/contract/manifest.schema.json): Each publicdata.au dated version that the pipeline reads, pinned by sha256, as data/manifest.json in the repository holds it. The site publishes no file of this kind. - [queensland.schema.json](https://surgerywaits.au/contract/queensland.schema.json): The file `queensland/.json` holds Queensland Health's quarterly figures for one facility, kept apart from the national figures and never ranked. - [queensland-index.schema.json](https://surgerywaits.au/contract/queensland-index.schema.json): The file queensland.json holds which Queensland facilities joined a national hospital, which were left out and why, and the quarters held. - [rules.schema.json](https://surgerywaits.au/contract/rules.schema.json): The file rules.json holds the limits and names the pipeline applies, which the site copy states. - [state.schema.json](https://surgerywaits.au/contract/state.schema.json): The file `states/.json` holds one state's figure for each category in the table's newest period, beside the national figure. Benchmarks are never ranked. - [suburbs.schema.json](https://surgerywaits.au/contract/suburbs.schema.json): The file suburbs.json holds each suburb or locality as [code, name, state, latitude, longitude] for the location search. - [surgery.schema.json](https://surgerywaits.au/contract/surgery.schema.json): The file `surgeries//.json` holds one category, with every public hospital's figures in the table's newest period. - [surgery-index.schema.json](https://surgerywaits.au/contract/surgery-index.schema.json): The file surgeries.json holds every category of planned surgery that has a page. - [tool-figures.schema.json](https://surgerywaits.au/contract/tool-figures.schema.json): The file /tool/figures.json holds every procedure's figure rows, keyed by procedure slug, which the compare tool loads when its surgery box is first used. A value is its number when published, and -1 minus the place of its reason in the index's reasons when it is not. A figure row is [hospital's place in the index's hospitals, stamp index, median wait, volume, rank or null, median history or null], and the history is the first year followed by one value for each later year, with null for a year the hospital did not report. pairs lists the places in the index's hospitals of the hospitals that have a page for the procedure. - [tool-index.schema.json](https://surgerywaits.au/contract/tool-index.schema.json): The file /tool/index.json holds what the compare tool loads when its page opens. The site build writes it from the dist. The figure rows of every procedure are in /tool/figures.json, keyed by procedure slug. A hospital row is [slug, name, state, latitude, longitude], and a figure row in /tool/figures.json points at a hospital by its place in this list. A reason code is -1 minus its place in reasons. - [tool-places.schema.json](https://surgerywaits.au/contract/tool-places.schema.json): The file /tool/places.json holds the suburbs and localities the compare tool searches. It loads when the place box is first used. A place is [name, state, latitude, longitude]. - [trend.schema.json](https://surgerywaits.au/contract/trend.schema.json): The file `trends/.json` holds each reported period of each category for one hospital, oldest first. ## Crawling and plain text - [Sitemap](https://surgerywaits.au/sitemap.xml): The sitemap index, which links the sitemap files. - [robots.txt](https://surgerywaits.au/robots.txt): The crawl rules and the content signals. - [llms-full.txt](https://surgerywaits.au/llms-full.txt): The text of the about, methodology and data pages and the credits. - [Agent catalog](https://surgerywaits.au/.well-known/ai-catalog.json): The catalog of the files and the server that an agent can read. The file at /.well-known/ard.json has the same content. - [MCP server card](https://surgerywaits.au/mcp/server-card): The card for the MCP server at /mcp, served by the Worker.