Looking for emergency department waiting times?
In an emergency call 000. Do not wait, and do not use a waiting-time website to decide whether something is an emergency.
"Hospital waiting times" means two very different things, and this site only covers one of them:
- Emergency department (ED) waits — how long people wait to be seen after walking into an emergency department. These change hour by hour, and several states publish them live. This site has no ED data at all.
- Planned-surgery waiting lists — how long people waited for surgery a specialist put them on a list for: months, not hours. That is what every figure on this site measures.
Your state's official ED waiting times
Each link below is the state health authority's own page — the only honest source for ED waits, because they move by the hour:
- New South Wales: NSW Health emergency department waiting times — live figures for major NSW hospitals.
- Victoria: VAHI emergency department wait times — updated daily, and the page itself says the figures are not live.
- Queensland: Queensland Open Hospitals — live figures, refreshed every 15 to 30 minutes.
- Western Australia: WA Health emergency department activity — live figures for Perth metropolitan hospitals.
- South Australia: SA Health emergency department dashboard — live figures, updated every 30 minutes.
- Tasmania: Tasmanian Department of Health ED waiting times — average wait for non-critical cases over the last two hours.
- Australian Capital Territory: Canberra Health Services ED waiting times — live figures for ACT emergency departments.
- Northern Territory: NT hospital healthcare data — the NT publishes no live dashboard; this page explains ED triage and points to the national statistics.
If you are here about surgery
If you are on a waiting list, or your general practitioner (GP) is writing a referral, this site compares the published planned-surgery waits at every Australian public hospital: search a surgery and a suburb, or start from every surgery type or your state.
Quick answers
Does Surgery Waits show emergency department waiting times?
No. Surgery Waits covers planned-surgery waiting lists only. Emergency department waits change hour by hour and are published by each state health authority; the guide links each state's official page.
Are emergency and surgery waiting times measured the same way?
No. Emergency department waits are measured in minutes and hours from arrival to being seen. Planned-surgery waits are measured in days from being placed on a waiting list to having the surgery.