Urgency categories explained
What Category 1, 2 and 3 mean, who decides yours, and how often each public hospital treats people within the recommended time.
Reference period 2024–25 (1 July 2024 to 30 June 2025) · released
When you are placed on a public hospital waiting list for planned surgery, you are given an urgency category. Your treating specialist assigns it after they assess you. It is a clinical judgement about how quickly your surgery should happen — not something you choose, and not something a website can work out for you.
The three categories
- Category 1 — urgent. Surgery is recommended within 30 days.
- Category 2 — semi-urgent. Surgery is recommended within 90 days.
- Category 3 — non-urgent. Surgery is recommended within 365 days.
The recommended time is a target, not a promise. Hospitals report how many people they treated within the recommended time for each category, and this site publishes that figure hospital by hospital — ranked, so you can see which hospitals met their targets:
Category 1 — urgent
Surgery recommended within 30 days. 234 public hospitals published an on-time figure for 2024–25.
Category 2 — semi-urgent
Surgery recommended within 90 days. 245 public hospitals published an on-time figure for 2024–25.
Category 3 — non-urgent
Surgery recommended within 365 days. 246 public hospitals published an on-time figure for 2024–25.
By state and territory
- Category 1 (urgent): NSW · VIC · QLD · WA · SA · TAS · ACT · NT
- Category 2 (semi-urgent): NSW · VIC · QLD · WA · SA · TAS · ACT · NT
- Category 3 (non-urgent): NSW · VIC · QLD · WA · SA · TAS · ACT · NT
How categories relate to the waiting times here
The waiting time for a surgery type — a hip replacement, say — covers everyone who had that surgery, in all three categories together. Those two views are never mixed on this site: a hospital page shows the surgery figures and the urgency figures separately, because combining them would invent a number nobody published.
So a hospital with a short median wait for your surgery may still be slower for your category, or faster. Take both numbers to your appointment and ask.
What to ask
- What urgency category am I likely to be, and why?
- What is the recommended time for that category, and how often does this hospital meet it?
- Does my category change if my condition changes while I am waiting?
Common questions
Who decides my urgency category for planned surgery?
Your treating specialist assigns your urgency category after assessing you. It is a clinical decision, not a choice you make, and not something a website can determine.
What are the recommended times for each urgency category?
Category 1 (urgent) is within 30 days, Category 2 (semi-urgent) within 90 days, and Category 3 (non-urgent) within 365 days. These are clinical targets, not guarantees.
Do hospitals meet the recommended times?
Not always. Every public hospital reports how many patients it treated within the recommended time for each category, and those percentages are published hospital by hospital on this site.