For journalists
Press kit + media contact
HospitalWaits is run by a medically trained data scientist with 10+ years across the NHS, pharma, and digital health. Quotes, charts, and methodology are all on the record.
Direct line
Mustafa Ghafouri (MBChB, MSc) — medically trained data scientist; Director, Doctor Data Ltd; Head of Data Science at Pharmacy2U; NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Fellow. Not currently in clinical practice.
- Email: mustafa@doctor-data.co.uk
- Background: /about · Methodology: /methodology
Happy to provide quotes, custom data cuts, charts, or commentary. Same-day response Mon–Fri for breaking RTT stories.
What we have
- 23 months of English RTT data (October 2024 → August 2026) — full weekly-band distribution across 566 providers × 18 specialties, not just headline numbers
- A&E performance for every English provider — 4-hour and 12-hour measures, monthly
- NHS Talking Therapies — median referral-to-treatment waits and the 6/18-week standards by provider
- NHS Scotland — stage-of-treatment waits for every health board, by specialty
- Distance-aware ranking via PostGIS — "shortest wait within X miles of postcode Y" — plus 12-month national and per-trust trend charts
Download the data — no signup, no paywall
Current-month snapshots as CSV, one click, attribution-ready. These regenerate automatically after each NHS release:
- postcode-lottery.csv — the story table: fastest vs slowest NHS trust per specialty and the ratio between them (the page to cite)
- rtt-latest.csv — every English trust × specialty: median wait, list size, 18-week performance (August 2026)
- ae-latest.csv — A&E attendances and 4/12-hour performance by provider
- tt-latest.csv — Talking Therapies waits and standards by provider
Need it sliced differently — one region, one specialty, a 12-month trend, a constituency cut? Email mustafa@doctor-data.co.uk with your deadline: custom cuts within 24 hours, free, attribution only. Developers: full JSON API docs.
What changed in the latest NHS data
NHS England's figures for August 2026, compared with July 2026. The median is the middle wait so far among the people still on a list. Of the 1,667 NHS acute or specialist trust lists we compared (50 or more people waiting in both months; 5 more left out because the list size changed by more than 1.5 times), the median rose by 2 weeks or more on 134 and fell by 2 weeks or more on 70.
| Trust and specialty | July 2026weeks | August 2026weeks | Changeweeks |
|---|---|---|---|
| South Warwickshire University NHS Foundation TrustRespiratory Medicine · 1,169 waiting in August 2026 | 18 | 22 | +4 |
| The Queen Elizabeth Hospital, King's Lynn, NHS Foundation TrustGeneral Internal Medicine · 285 waiting in August 2026 | 1 | 5 | +4 |
| Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation TrustGeneral Internal Medicine · 77 waiting in August 2026 | 6 | 10 | +4 |
| Nottingham University Hospitals NHS TrustGynaecology · 7,024 waiting in August 2026 | 17 | 20 | +3 |
| Ashford and St Peter's Hospitals NHS Foundation TrustOral Surgery · 4,671 waiting in August 2026 | 16 | 19 | +3 |
| Trust and specialty | July 2026weeks | August 2026weeks | Changeweeks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Salisbury NHS Foundation TrustDermatology · 1,020 waiting in August 2026 | 38 | 31 | −7 |
| Manchester University NHS Foundation TrustNeurology · 79 waiting in August 2026 | 13 | 7 | −6 |
| Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation TrustDermatology · 10,264 waiting in August 2026 | 24 | 20 | −4 |
| Nottingham University Hospitals NHS TrustOphthalmology · 8,554 waiting in August 2026 | 13 | 9 | −4 |
| University Hospitals of Leicester NHS TrustNeurology · 2,967 waiting in August 2026 | 22 | 18 | −4 |
National median wait by specialty
Between July 2026 and August 2026 the national median (the median of every provider's median, as on our national pages) was longer in 9, shorter in 0 and unchanged in 9 of 18 specialties.
| Specialty | July 2026weeks | August 2026weeks | Changeweeks |
|---|---|---|---|
| General Surgery | 10 | 11 | +1 |
| Trauma and Orthopaedic | 11 | 12 | +1 |
| ENT | 13 | 14 | +1 |
| Ophthalmology | 7 | 8 | +1 |
| Neurosurgery | 11 | 12 | +1 |
| General Internal Medicine | 7 | 8 | +1 |
| Gastroenterology | 8 | 9 | +1 |
| Rheumatology | 9 | 10 | +1 |
| Gynaecology | 12 | 13 | +1 |
Unchanged: Urology, Oral Surgery, Plastic Surgery, Cardiothoracic Surgery, Cardiology, Dermatology, Respiratory Medicine, Neurology, Elderly Medicine.
Source: NHS England Referral to Treatment (RTT) waiting times, July 2026 and August 2026. Trust lists: NHS acute or specialist trusts only, 50 or more waiting in both months, and a change of 2 weeks or more. A list whose size in one month was more than 1.5 times its size in the other is left out (5 of them this time), because a jump that size usually means a reporting or merger change. A change in a trust's median does not say why it changed. How this is worked out. Same figures as JSON: /api/v1/movers.
Story angles this month
The five biggest NHS waiting lists in the latest monthly figures (data through August 2026):
- Trauma and Orthopaedic Service — 851,183 on the list across 306 providers; national median 12 weeks.
- Ophthalmology Service — 625,063 on the list across 347 providers; national median 8 weeks.
- Ear Nose and Throat Service — 590,233 on the list across 166 providers; national median 14 weeks.
- Gynaecology Service — 586,582 on the list across 195 providers; national median 13 weeks.
- Dermatology Service — 423,217 on the list across 118 providers; national median 9 weeks.
Every national specialty page has a 12-month trend chart and the full ranked list of trusts — ready to screenshot and cite.
Release days — the HospitalWaits Monthly Briefing
NHS England releases monthly RTT data at 09:30 UK time, usually on the second Thursday of the month. The exact dates are on NHS England's statistics calendar. Our automated pipeline ingests the new month the same day.
On each release morning we send the HospitalWaits Monthly Briefing: the headline numbers, 2–3 findings the NHS press notice doesn't show, and figures localised to your patch — in your inbox before 11:00. Email mustafa@doctor-data.co.uk with the area you cover to be added (subject line: “Monthly Briefing — add me” if the link doesn't open your mail app).
Embed our charts + data
Waiting-time widgets you can drop into any article or website as an iframe — they update themselves each month and carry the NHS source line automatically. Pick a specialty or a specific trust and copy the snippet at /embed/docs. Developers can pull the raw numbers from our free JSON API and CSV snapshots.
Quoting + attribution
Cite as: "HospitalWaits, hospitalwaits.co.uk — analysis of NHS England RTT data."
All NHS data on this site is licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. You're free to reproduce charts and figures with attribution.
Methodology is fully documented at /methodology — including how median wait is calculated, how distance is computed, and known V1 limitations.
Independence
HospitalWaits is independent. We have no affiliation with NHS England, NHS Digital, or any NHS organisation. We are not funded by any healthcare provider. We do not list private hospitals' self-pay prices for free: since 13 October 2026 a self-pay listing can appear only as a paid partnership, clearly labelled "Sponsored" per our public /sponsorship-policy.
About Doctor Data Ltd (boilerplate for citations)
Doctor Data Ltd is a UK healthcare data company founded by Mustafa Ghafouri (MBChB, MSc), a medically trained data scientist (currently Head of Data Science at Pharmacy2U; NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Fellow; not currently in clinical practice). Doctor Data Ltd builds evidence-based tools for patients, journalists, and NHS organisations to make better-informed decisions about UK healthcare. HospitalWaits.co.uk is its first consumer product. Registered in England.
Web: doctor-data.co.uk · Press contact: mustafa@doctor-data.co.uk
For data queries beyond what's on the site (custom regional cuts, historical analysis beyond the 23 months on the site, derivative metrics), email mustafa@doctor-data.co.uk — usually a same-day turnaround for journalists on deadline.