Hospital Wait Times in Australia

Back to top

How long is the average emergency department wait time in Australia?

Are wait times for elective surgeries long in Australia?

Are hospital wait times different depending on the elective surgical treatment I’m having?

Can where I live affect how long I wait to be seen at the hospital?

How can private health insurance help ease pressure on public hospitals?

Where can I find and compare health insurance?

Long story short

The national median wait time at emergency departments in 2023–24 was 18 minutes

How long you wait can depend on your triage category and the hospital you attend.

Opting to go private for elective surgery could mean you’re seen sooner

It also means you can pick your hospital and doctor.

Living regionally or in a remote part of Australia doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll wait longer for treatment

You could actually have a shorter wait than people in major cities.

How long is the average emergency department wait time in Australia?

Who would choose to hang out in an emergency department? Not us. But regardless of our preferences, it’s likely many of us will have the pleasure of visiting an emergency room at some point in our lives. But are the wait times so long that you’ll need to bring a book or have enough data on your phone to watch a movie?

Are wait times for elective surgeries long in Australia?

Not everybody goes to hospital via the emergency department. Instead, you might have a set appointment time for your surgery or treatment. In these cases, you’re having what is known as ‘elective’ surgery.  

If you choose to go through the public hospital system, your name is added to a wait list for your local hospital (you can’t pick where you go or who your doctor is). When you’re seen can depend on your urgency category. These are a bit like the triage categories for emergency departments. They, too, have target times for when patients should be treated by. 

Public wait lists can be long, and you might need to be prepared to manage your symptoms while you wait for your surgery. This could be as simple as stocking up on Panadol, or it could mean cutting back your work hours until you get your surgery. 

For those going private, there’s no wait list. You simply book in a time with your chosen practitioner. This can make it a bit easier to plan any time off work you’ll need to recover, and to have some support on hand as you get back on your feet. 

Helpful tip

Waiting lists are not the same as waiting periods. Waiting periods are set lengths of time you’ll need to serve when you take out health insurance for the first time (or upgrade to more cover).  

For instance, if you’ve just bought your first bronze hospital policy and you’re hoping to get some serious relief from your carpal tunnel syndrome via surgery, you’ll need to hold tight for 12 months before your health insurance will cover you. That’s because it’s a pre-existing condition. Your waiting period for a new condition (as in, you didn’t have it before you bought the policy) would only be two months. 

Andres Gutierrez

General Manager – Health

So how long could you be waiting if you choose to go public or private (assuming you’ve satisfied your waiting period)? 

Well, as with emergency room wait times, one way to get a sense of hospital waiting list lengths is to look at the median. Except here, we’re dealing with days rather than minutes. 

In 2022–23, at a national level, Australian public patients waited for twice as long as private patients in public hospitals. As you might expect, these longer wait times – including the difference in days for public and private patients – can stretch out for months. In fact, twice as many public patients waited over 12 months for surgery than their private patient counterparts.  

Elective surgery wait times, of course, can vary within states. For instance, you could have a very different wait length in an urban Perth hospital compared to a regional one in Bunbury. 

Depending on your circumstances, a longer wait might not be an issue for you. But since you’re on the list for surgery, you’re probably dealing with at least a few frustrations. Being seen sooner could be something you come to prize very dearly. 

Are hospital wait times different depending on the elective surgical treatment I’m having?

As of September 2024, Australia has roughly 6,500 registered surgeons, but many of them have specialisations. That means they only really do certain types of surgery, like neurosurgery or urology. For instance, there are only 250 registered vascular surgeons – and only one in the entirety of the Northern Territory.²Medical Board of Australia – Registrant data, p9 If you’ve been planning a move up north, you may want a doctor to look at your veins first. 

As you can imagine, a high demand and a low supply of surgeons could increase elective surgery wait times, even if the operation is categorised as urgent. 

Since lots of surgeries happen each year in Australia’s public hospitals, we’ve picked a sample of five common surgical treatments for both public and private patients at public hospitals. 

Median wait times in 2022–23 were shorter for the private patients, no matter which of the five surgical treatments they were in for.  

This might only be a couple of days difference, say if you were having a skin lesion removed. 

Alternatively, it could set you up for some seriously sour months. For instance, the median wait time for a total knee replacement was significant for both public and private patients. However, there was a more than 150-day difference in wait times for private and public patients.  

Opting to be treated as a private patient – which, logistically, is far easier than flying to another part of the country – could be a way to get a serious head start on recovery. 

Can where I live affect how long I wait to be seen at the hospital?

While living remotely can mean having more space to yourself and not having to listen to your upstairs neighbour practice tap dancing, it comes with some healthcare cons. In a nutshell, it can be harder and more expensive for states to provide health care in far-out regions, so you’re left with limited services and lower resources, like fewer beds. This can mean long wait times. 

As a result, you might not be able to access the health care you need before your condition worsens and requires a stay in hospital.  

This bears out in the stats. Those living in remote areas of Australia were hospitalised for elective surgery at a higher rate than those who called a city home in 2023–24. That higher rate, too, carries over to potentially preventable hospitalisations, with remote and very remote folks being hospitalised at two to three times the rate of their city cousins in 2021–22.³Australian Institute of Health and Welfare – Rural and remote health 

How can private health insurance help ease pressure on public hospitals?

Australia’s public health care system is certainly a great achievement. But in the post-Covid era, we’re seeing wait times rise and the public hospital system needing a boost. 

This boost could involve increasing hospital capacities – i.e. adding more beds – along with cutting down on avoidable admissions through more out-of-hospital services. But does private health insurance have a role to play? 

Definitely! Private health insurance helps to reduce demand on public hospitals. One way this happens is by policyholders opting to go to a private hospital – and potentially getting one of those shorter wait times talked about earlier.  

Not to mention that accessing health care sooner, like seeing a dentist or physio, could mean you don’t need to go to hospital at all (at least for that condition). In 2022–23, there were over 87,000 hospitalisations for dental conditions alone that could have been prevented with earlier treatment.⁶Australian Institute of Health and Welfare – Oral health and dental care in Australia It’s okay if you need to have a quick pause from reading this page to go brush your teeth right now. 

Although helping our public hospital system is a good thing to do, it’s understandable that many of us need a little extra encouragement. That’s why incentives like the Medicare Levy Surcharge (MLS) and private health insurance rebate exist. 

The MLS is an additional surcharge on your tax if you earn over a certain threshold. Everyone already gives 2% of their taxable income to help keep Medicare and the public system running. The MLS, though, could mean as much as a further 1.5% of your taxable income going towards public health.

There are only two ways to avoid the MLS. Your first option is simply earning under the threshold, but that probably isn’t really feasible if you want to also enjoy holidays, regular little treats, and the general perks of a disposable income. Alternatively, you can take out and keep appropriate private hospital cover. 

If the MLS is the stick, the private health insurance rebate is the delicious carrot. This time, the government is putting money back into your wallet – assuming you have suitable hospital cover and meet the income threshold. How much you’ll get back depends on what your income is, but it could cover a fair whack of your health insurance premiums.  

Where can I find and compare health insurance?

If you’re worried about waiting a long time for surgery or simply want to do your bit for the public hospital system, iSelect is here to help. We make it easy to compare a range of health insurance policies and providers. You can get comparing health insurance online or over the phone with one of our health comparison experts on 1800 784 772.