Information for doctors

The waiting times data in this site does not cover all patients of the NSW Health system. Rather, it presents data on private and public booked surgical and medical inpatients in public, acute hospitals in NSW, Port Macquarie Base Hospital, and Hawkesbury District Hospital.

In some cases, a significant amount of a doctor's practice is in the private sector. The information presented here does not reflect a doctor's experience in the private sector.

The site does not have information on:

• Private hospital waiting times
• Emergency inpatients
• Doctors who have admitted fewer than two patients for a particular procedure within an urgency category during the collection period (usually 12 months)
• Patients who are not admitted to hospital, for example, community health clients or patients who undergo procedures as an outpatient. In some cases, patients undergoing relatively minor procedures such as endoscopies may be treated on an outpatient basis at some hospitals.
• For some medical procedures, the doctor under whose name a patient is admitted may not be the one who performs the procedure. This is understood to occur smetimes for cardiac catheterisation and coronary angioplasty. As data in this site are attributed to the admitting doctor, the publication of waiting times for these procedures implies that the admitting doctor is the person performing these procedures. As this may not always be the case, these procedures have been excluded from the site pending further review.
• Obstetric, dialysis and psychiatric patients.
• Not-ready-for-care patients.
• Sub-acute services (rehabilitation, palliative care), nursing homes.
• Patients awaiting transplants.
• Cosmetic Surgery.