How we count

Published by the service itself

Figures marked like this come from files the NHS and the police publish every month. We copy them without adjusting them, and each page says which month they are for.

• GP surgeries: NHS England's Appointments in General Practice and its figures for how quickly surgeries answer the phone.
• Hospital waits: NHS England's referral to treatment waiting times, by trust and specialty.
• A&E and urgent treatment centres: NHS England's monthly A&E attendances, including how many patients were dealt with within four hours.
• Police: police.uk's monthly figures for how quickly each force answers 999 and 101 calls.

Official figures measure what the service chooses to record. A call answered in seconds, or an appointment booked, says nothing about what happened next. Where something is not published at all, the page says so.

What happened next, from the people it happened to

Figures marked like this come from people who used the service and logged what happened: how long they waited, how often it was cancelled, whether they were kept informed, whether anyone came.

How an entry gets counted

• Confirmed by email. Nothing counts until the person taps a link we email them. Unconfirmed entries are deleted after 7 days.
• Limits per person. One wait of each kind per place every 30 days, and a daily limit on entries from one person or connection.
• Sudden bursts are held. If an unusual number of entries arrive for one place in a day, the extra ones are held and checked by a person before they count.
• Facts only. Dates, times and fixed choices. There is no comment box anywhere, and nobody is named.

When figures appear

• Ten before anything shows. A place's logged figures appear only once 10 people have logged there. Until then the page shows only how many have been logged.
• Five for a breakdown. A kind of wait, a postcode area or an answer to one question gets its own line only once 5 people are in it.
• The last 90 days. Figures count entries logged or ended in the last 90 days, plus clocks that are still running.
• Running clocks are checked. People who are still waiting are asked about once a month whether they still are. If three reminders go unanswered, the clock is closed and stops counting.

How the numbers are worked out

• "Typical" means the middle value. If you line up every wait from shortest to longest, the typical wait is the one in the middle. One very long or very short wait cannot drag it.
• Counts, not percentages. With small numbers we say "4 of 10", not "40%", so you can see how many people a figure rests on.
• Good and bad count the same. A quick wait is logged and counted exactly like a slow one.

What the logged figures cannot tell you

• They are not a random sample. People choose whether to log, and people who waited a long time are more likely to. The logged figures show what happened to the people who logged, not to every patient or caller.
• Memory is not a stopwatch. Waits logged afterwards rely on people's dates and estimates. Timed visits are more exact, but start when the person taps, not when they walked in.
• Need comes first. A&E treats the sickest first and the police grade every call. A long wait for something minor can be the system working as it should.
• Small numbers move. A figure built on ten people can change a lot when the eleventh logs.

This is why the two kinds of figure sit side by side and are never merged into a single score or ranking.

Fair comparisons

• GP appointments. Where a surgery records enough of them, we use its general consultations, which leaves out vaccinations and planned clinics that would make waits look longer or shorter than they are. Where it does not, we use all appointments and say so.
• Waiting rooms. The headline is how long after the appointment time people were called in, because time sat waiting depends on how early they arrived.
• 999 and 101. Responses are shown separately, because a 101 call is not meant to get a 999 response.
• Whole trusts. Official hospital and A&E figures cover a whole trust, not a single building. Pages say where that applies.

Corrections and questions

If you run or work for a service shown here and think a figure is wrong, or you want to ask how a number was reached, email hello@howlongdidyouwait.co.uk. Official figures are corrected when the publisher corrects them. Logged entries that break the rules above are removed.

How we handle personal information is set out in the privacy notice.