Referral to treatment (RTT) data for August 2026, published 8 October 2026 · Page updated 2 November 2026

NHS trust waiting times ranked, by specialty

Pick a specialty to see every NHS trust in England ranked by how long patients on its waiting list had waited at the end of August 2026, from NHS England referral to treatment (RTT) statistics.

Past figures, not a promise. These are NHS England figures for patients who were already on the waiting list at the end of August 2026: how long they had waited so far. They are not a forecast or a guarantee of how long a new patient will wait, and waits can change quickly. Waiting Times UK is an independent website, not part of the NHS, and this is not medical advice.

Summary

Across England, the specialty with the largest waiting list at the end of August 2026 was trauma and orthopaedics (851,183 pathways). The shortest England median wait was in elderly medicine (7.6 weeks) and the longest in oral surgery (16.4 weeks). Within every specialty the gap between trusts is wide, as the table shows.

Which specialty do you want to compare?

Ranked: NHS trusts with at least 20 pathways waiting for the specialty and a published median. Where trusts tie for shortest or longest, one is named.

To compare particular trusts, use the side-by-side comparison. For every measure at once, including scans, cancer and A&E, see compare NHS trusts. Each specialty at each trust also has its own page in the specialty waits index.

What do these measures mean?

• Median weeks waited: half the pathways on the list had waited this long or less so far, at the end of the month.
• Under 18 weeks: the share of the list that had waited less than 18 weeks (the NHS standard is 92%). Pathways with an unknown start date are left out, as NHS England does.
• 92nd percentile: 92% of pathways had waited this many weeks or less.
• Pathways waiting: the size of the list. A pathway is one patient’s wait for one specialty; a person can be on more than one list.
• Over 52 weeks: pathways that had waited more than a year.

NHS England publishes these figures for each trust as a whole, not for each hospital. A trust can run several hospitals, so the site you are treated at may have a different wait. A trust is shown for a specialty only if at least 20 pathways were waiting. Specialist trusts, and trusts that take complex referrals from elsewhere, are not like for like with general hospitals.

Can I choose a hospital with a shorter wait?

In England you have a legal right to start consultant-led, non-urgent treatment within 18 weeks of referral, with some exceptions, and you can usually choose where you are referred for a first outpatient appointment. Each hospital has a Patient Advice and Liaison Service (PALS) that can help with questions about your wait. Your waiting time rights explained.

Not medical advice. If your symptoms change or get worse while you wait, contact your GP or the team treating you. If it is not an emergency, NHS 111 online or calling 111 can tell you where to go, including urgent treatment centres, which often have shorter waits. Call 999 or go to A&E for life-threatening emergencies such as chest pain, difficulty breathing, severe bleeding or signs of a stroke.