The NHS postcode lottery
For the same NHS operation, how long you wait depends heavily on which hospital you are sent to. The slowest trust in the country can be treating people many times slower than the fastest — often two hospitals a short drive apart.
The widest gap right now is in dermatology: Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust is waiting 13× longer than East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust for the same care — 38 weeks versus 3 weeks. And you have a legal right to ask to be sent to the faster one.
Compiled by Dr Mustafa Ghafouri (MBChB, MSc) · NHS England RTT data, July 2026
The gap for every specialty
The fastest and slowest NHS trust for each specialty, ranked by the size of the gap. Only NHS trusts with at least 500 patients waiting are included, so the comparison is between two real, ordinary-sized lists. Every trust links to its full record so you can check it.
Why the gap exists — and what you can do about it
Trusts have different theatre capacity, staffing, backlogs and how they pool their waiting lists. None of this is visible to a patient at the point of referral, so most people simply go to their nearest hospital and wait — even when somewhere nearby is treating people months sooner.
In England you have a legal right, at the point your GP refers you, to choose which hospital you are sent to for planned care — including one with a shorter list. It is the NHS Right to Choose, and it costs nothing.
Check your own wait
See where your operation is fastest near you
Compare every NHS hospital for your specialty, ranked by wait and distance from your postcode.
Compare NHS waits by specialtyHow these figures are worked out
Every figure comes from NHS England's monthly Referral-to-Treatment (RTT) statistics, for July 2026. For each specialty we take the median wait at every NHS trust, keep only those with at least 500 patients on the waiting list and a median of two weeks or more, and compare the fastest with the slowest. Those two floors matter: NHS medians are worked out from wait bands, so on a very small list the figure swings on a handful of patients, and a median under two weeks almost always signals an unusual or partial submission rather than a genuinely faster service. Community and mental-health trusts are set aside so the comparison is like-for-like. The “gap” is the slowest divided by the fastest. Full method is on the methodology page; nothing here is medical advice.