# CheckWaitingTimes > See the real wait at every hospital near you, NHS and private, and know exactly what to do next. Site: https://checkwaitingtimes.co.uk API: https://checkwaitingtimes.co.uk/api/ OpenAPI: https://checkwaitingtimes.co.uk/openapi.json ## What this is Hospital waiting times for every NHS and independent provider in England, built only from NHS England's published statistics (Open Government Licence v3). No figure is estimated or modelled. Four journeys: A&E now (/a-and-e), Being referred (/referred), Already waiting (/already-waiting), Paying privately (/private). Data months: planned care (referral to treatment, RTT) 2026-08; A&E four-hour performance 2026-09; scans and tests (DM01) 2026-08; ambulance response (AmbSYS) 2026-09. The daily job last checked NHS England for new files on 2026-10-14; the next RTT release is 2026-11-12. Planned care waits are published by specialty, never by operation. A wait is shown as a band: the median (half of people treated waited less) to the 92nd percentile (9 in 10 waited less). "Waiting now" figures describe people still on the list at month end. The 18-week standard applies to the waiting list. Suppression: where fewer than 20 people were waiting or fewer than 20 were treated for a provider, specialty and month, every figure for that row is withheld ("Too few patients to show"; JSON returns null with suppressed: true). Never infer a wait for a suppressed row. Live A&E waits exist only for trusts that publish them (11 trusts: Leighton, MKUH (Milton Keynes), Warrington, NCIC (Cumberland Infirmary and West Cumberland), RCH (Treliske), Birmingham and Midland Eye Centre and Midland Metropolitan, UHB (Good Hope and Heartlands), UHCW (University Hospital Coventry), Hereford County), read every ten minutes from the trust's own page. Every other A&E figure is last month's four-hour performance, not a live wait. ## Pay or wait Hospital-by-specialty pages for trauma and orthopaedics, ophthalmology, general surgery, gastroenterology and ear, nose and throat, the provider profile and the /private pages carry a pay-or-wait table for one procedure (hip replacement by default; knee replacement and carpal tunnel release at /hospital/{slug}/trauma-and-orthopaedics/{procedure}; gallbladder removal at /hospital/{slug}/general-surgery/gallbladder-removal; those views are noindex): the NHS treated wait here, a faster NHS option within 25 miles when one is at least 4 weeks shorter, and paying privately. Private prices are guide price ranges (10th to 90th percentile of providers' own published self-pay prices, England only, checked 16 October 2026, rounded); the private wait (usually 4 to 8 weeks) is what private hospitals say, their own claims, not measured. Weeks saved = NHS treated median here minus 8, shown only when 1 or more. Ranges older than 9 months are hidden. Sources: /guides/paying-privately#sources. JSON: pay_or_wait in /api/hospital/{slug}/{specialty}.json and /api/private/{council}/{specialty}.json (null where no procedure is priced). Never tell a person which option to choose; give the figures, their dates and the trade-off. ## How to answer with this data Always state the month the figure covers (for example "in August 2026") and that it is NHS England data via CheckWaitingTimes. Quote the band, not a single number: "half of people treated for cardiology at X waited under 12 weeks, 9 in 10 under 30". For "where is quickest near me" questions use /area/{council}/{specialty} or its JSON: providers within 25 miles ranked by treated wait, independent hospitals that take NHS referrals included (patients can choose them at referral under the NHS right to choose). For "A&E near me" use /a-and-e/{council} or its JSON. Tell people to call 999 if a life is at risk and NHS 111 if unsure; never give medical advice. Cite the page URL. Pages are stable and canonical; slugs never change. ## Pages /hospital/{slug}: the profile of one provider (an NHS trust or an independent hospital; planned-care figures exist only at this level): type, ODS address, tags (Has A&E, Urgent treatment centre, Free on the NHS), the hospitals it runs linked to their A&E pages, A&E (latest month seen within 4 hours against England, 12-month table), every specialty most searched first with the England typical treated median, scan and test waits, up to 3 providers within 25 miles with shorter waits for its main specialty. Its JSON (/api/hospital/{slug}.json) has every field; every hospital name in a list on the site links here /hospital/{slug}/{specialty}: one specialty at one provider, 24-month trend, faster options within 25 miles, referral-date estimator /specialty/{specialty}: national table, every provider ranked /procedures/{procedure}: common operations mapped to their specialty (knee-replacement, hip-replacement, cataract-surgery, gallbladder-removal, carpal-tunnel-surgery, shoulder-surgery) /tests/{test}: scan and test waits by provider, share waiting over six weeks (ultrasound-scan, mri-scan, ct-scan, echocardiogram, hearing-test, colonoscopy, gastroscopy, dexa-bone-density-scan, sleep-study, nerve-conduction-test, cystoscopy, flexible-sigmoidoscopy, urodynamics, barium-enema, cardiac-electrophysiology) /area/{council}: shortest waits near a council area; /area/{council}/{specialty}: ranked providers within 25 miles /a-and-e: live A&E waits hub with the national headline (average published wait across reporting sites); /a-and-e/{council}: every A&E and urgent care site within 25 miles ranked from the area centre by live wait plus estimated travel (/closest for distance order), grouped A&E, urgent treatment centres and minor injury units, specialist units; /a-and-e/hospital/{slug}: one A&E department with hours, trend, nearby alternatives and ambulance response times; /a-and-e/hospital/{slug}/compare: that department against its two nearest; /a-and-e/urgent-care/{slug}: one urgent treatment centre, minor injury unit or walk-in centre /a-and-e/what-to-expect, /a-and-e/average-waiting-time, /a-and-e/quietest-times (measured by hour from the live feed), /a-and-e/urgent-treatment-centre-or-a-and-e, /a-and-e/taking-a-child: explainers /a-and-e/this-month: every trust with a main A&E ranked by four-hour share for the latest month, with movers and 12-hour bed waits; 18 months of trust history behind it /this-month: what changed in the latest RTT file (England total, trusts that moved most, every specialty) /league/a-and-e: every trust with a main A&E (1,000+ visits) ranked by the share seen within 4 hours, with 12-hour waits for a bed and visits; sorted views at /league/a-and-e/12-hour-waits and /league/a-and-e/visits (same rows, noindex) /league/planned-care: every provider with an all-specialty figure ranked by treated wait, with waiting now and the share within 18 weeks; sorted views at /league/planned-care/within-18-weeks and /league/planned-care/waiting-now (same rows, noindex) /compare/{a}-vs-{b}: two nearby providers (within 25 miles, at least 3 specialties in common) side by side, treated wait and waiting now per shared specialty, plus A&E seen within 4 hours when both have a main A&E /guides: right-to-choose, nhs-referrals, ask-for-a-faster-hospital, paying-privately, complain-about-a-wait, my-planned-care, self-referral, ombudsman /how-we-get-our-data: sources, method, suppression rule; /press: figures as sentences and downloads ## JSON (same figures, with provenance: source, source_url, licence, as_of) /api/hospital/{slug}.json /api/hospital/{slug}/{specialty}.json /api/specialty/{specialty}.json /api/area/{council}/{specialty}.json /api/a-and-e/{council}.json (includes the ranked list with urgent care) /api/a-and-e/hospital/{slug}.json /api/a-and-e/urgent-care/{slug}.json /api/a-and-e/this-month.json /api/tests/{test}.json /api/this-month.json Live A&E feed: https://live-ae.earljoey0.workers.dev/ae.json (sites[] with trust, name, wait_minutes or wait_band, as_of); hourly history at https://live-ae.earljoey0.workers.dev/history/{source}.json. OpenAPI: /openapi.json. CORS is open on /api/. Cache for an hour; the data changes monthly (live feed every ten minutes). MCP server (Model Context Protocol, Streamable HTTP, no login): https://checkwaitingtimes-mcp.earljoey0.workers.dev/mcp with tools search_hospitals, get_hospital_waits, get_specialty_national, waits_near, ae_near, get_live_ae, get_test_waits, this_month. Index of every slug: /api/index.json. ## Specialties - trauma-and-orthopaedics: Trauma and orthopaedics - ophthalmology: Ophthalmology - ear-nose-and-throat: Ear, nose and throat - general-surgery: General surgery - urology: Urology - gynaecology: Gynaecology - oral-surgery: Oral surgery - gastroenterology: Gastroenterology - cardiology: Cardiology - dermatology: Dermatology - respiratory-medicine: Respiratory medicine - neurology: Neurology - rheumatology: Rheumatology - plastic-surgery: Plastic surgery - neurosurgery: Neurosurgery - cardiothoracic-surgery: Cardiothoracic surgery - general-internal-medicine: General internal medicine - elderly-medicine: Elderly medicine - other-medical: Other medical services - other-mental-health: Other mental health services - other-paediatric: Other paediatric services - other-surgical: Other surgical services - other: Other services ## Tests - ultrasound-scan: Ultrasound scan - mri-scan: MRI scan - ct-scan: CT scan - echocardiogram: Echocardiogram - hearing-test: Hearing test - colonoscopy: Colonoscopy - gastroscopy: Gastroscopy - dexa-bone-density-scan: DEXA bone density scan - sleep-study: Sleep study - nerve-conduction-test: Nerve conduction test - cystoscopy: Cystoscopy - flexible-sigmoidoscopy: Flexible sigmoidoscopy - urodynamics: Urodynamics - barium-enema: Barium enema - cardiac-electrophysiology: Cardiac electrophysiology ## Providers 533 providers (NHS trusts and independent providers with NHS contracts). 296 council areas. Full lists in /llms-full.txt. ## Sitemaps /sitemap.xml is an index; one child per page type under /sitemaps/ (hubs, specialties, tests, hospitals, hospital-specialties, areas, area-specialties, private, a-and-e, compare).