This dataset can be found in:

NHS waiting lists: closed referral to treatment pathways, September 2011 onwards

Standard shorthand is used in this table: [x] = not available.

Data values	Data description	Date	Local health board provider	Specialty	Weeks waited
20	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Anaesthetics	Over 0 weeks and up to 1 week
1	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Anaesthetics	Over 2 weeks and up to 3 weeks
78	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Anaesthetics	Over 3 weeks and up to 4 weeks
9	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Anaesthetics	Over 4 weeks and up to 5 weeks
8	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Anaesthetics	Over 5 weeks and up to 6 weeks
3	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Anaesthetics	Over 6 weeks and up to 7 weeks
5	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Anaesthetics	Over 7 weeks and up to 8 weeks
2	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Anaesthetics	Over 9 weeks and up to 10 weeks
5	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Anaesthetics	Over 10 weeks and up to 11 weeks
3	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Anaesthetics	Over 11 weeks and up to 12 weeks
2	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Anaesthetics	Over 13 weeks and up to 14 weeks
2	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Anaesthetics	Over 14 weeks and up to 15 weeks
2	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Anaesthetics	Over 15 weeks and up to 16 weeks
3	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Anaesthetics	Over 16 weeks and up to 17 weeks
1	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Anaesthetics	Over 17 weeks and up to 18 weeks
6	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Anaesthetics	Over 18 weeks and up to 19 weeks
9	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Anaesthetics	Over 19 weeks and up to 20 weeks
7	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Anaesthetics	Over 20 weeks and up to 21 weeks
4	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Anaesthetics	Over 21 weeks and up to 22 weeks
6	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Anaesthetics	Over 22 weeks and up to 23 weeks
4	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Anaesthetics	Over 23 weeks and up to 24 weeks
3	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Anaesthetics	Over 24 weeks and up to 25 weeks
2	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Anaesthetics	Over 25 weeks and up to 26 weeks
5	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Anaesthetics	Over 26 weeks and up to 27 weeks
3	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Anaesthetics	Over 28 weeks and up to 29 weeks
2	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Anaesthetics	Over 29 weeks and up to 30 weeks
1	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Anaesthetics	Over 36 weeks and up to 37 weeks
196	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Anaesthetics	Total
20	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Audiological Medicine	Over 0 weeks and up to 1 week
9	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Audiological Medicine	Over 1 week and up to 2 weeks
3	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Audiological Medicine	Over 2 weeks and up to 3 weeks
13	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Audiological Medicine	Over 3 weeks and up to 4 weeks
9	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Audiological Medicine	Over 4 weeks and up to 5 weeks
6	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Audiological Medicine	Over 5 weeks and up to 6 weeks
17	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Audiological Medicine	Over 6 weeks and up to 7 weeks
11	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Audiological Medicine	Over 7 weeks and up to 8 weeks
5	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Audiological Medicine	Over 8 weeks and up to 9 weeks
7	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Audiological Medicine	Over 9 weeks and up to 10 weeks
10	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Audiological Medicine	Over 10 weeks and up to 11 weeks
2	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Audiological Medicine	Over 11 weeks and up to 12 weeks
3	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Audiological Medicine	Over 12 weeks and up to 13 weeks
18	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Audiological Medicine	Over 13 weeks and up to 14 weeks
14	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Audiological Medicine	Over 14 weeks and up to 15 weeks
16	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Audiological Medicine	Over 15 weeks and up to 16 weeks
8	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Audiological Medicine	Over 16 weeks and up to 17 weeks
5	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Audiological Medicine	Over 17 weeks and up to 18 weeks
4	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Audiological Medicine	Over 18 weeks and up to 19 weeks
2	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Audiological Medicine	Over 20 weeks and up to 21 weeks
4	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Audiological Medicine	Over 21 weeks and up to 22 weeks
2	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Audiological Medicine	Over 22 weeks and up to 23 weeks
2	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Audiological Medicine	Over 23 weeks and up to 24 weeks
2	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Audiological Medicine	Over 24 weeks and up to 25 weeks
2	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Audiological Medicine	Over 25 weeks and up to 26 weeks
3	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Audiological Medicine	Over 26 weeks and up to 27 weeks
2	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Audiological Medicine	Over 27 weeks and up to 28 weeks
5	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Audiological Medicine	Over 28 weeks and up to 29 weeks
1	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Audiological Medicine	Over 29 weeks and up to 30 weeks
205	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Audiological Medicine	Total
352	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 0 weeks and up to 1 week
133	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 1 week and up to 2 weeks
153	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 2 weeks and up to 3 weeks
194	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 3 weeks and up to 4 weeks
211	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 4 weeks and up to 5 weeks
202	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 5 weeks and up to 6 weeks
169	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 6 weeks and up to 7 weeks
130	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 7 weeks and up to 8 weeks
140	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 8 weeks and up to 9 weeks
146	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 9 weeks and up to 10 weeks
134	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 10 weeks and up to 11 weeks
118	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 11 weeks and up to 12 weeks
121	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 12 weeks and up to 13 weeks
142	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 13 weeks and up to 14 weeks
127	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 14 weeks and up to 15 weeks
88	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 15 weeks and up to 16 weeks
74	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 16 weeks and up to 17 weeks
82	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 17 weeks and up to 18 weeks
59	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 18 weeks and up to 19 weeks
57	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 19 weeks and up to 20 weeks
58	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 20 weeks and up to 21 weeks
46	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 21 weeks and up to 22 weeks
40	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 22 weeks and up to 23 weeks
48	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 23 weeks and up to 24 weeks
47	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 24 weeks and up to 25 weeks
54	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 25 weeks and up to 26 weeks
52	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 26 weeks and up to 27 weeks
35	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 27 weeks and up to 28 weeks
35	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 28 weeks and up to 29 weeks
25	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 29 weeks and up to 30 weeks
31	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 30 weeks and up to 31 weeks
27	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 31 weeks and up to 32 weeks
22	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 32 weeks and up to 33 weeks
13	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 33 weeks and up to 34 weeks
16	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 34 weeks and up to 35 weeks
4	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 35 weeks and up to 36 weeks
4	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 36 weeks and up to 37 weeks
1	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 37 weeks and up to 38 weeks
3	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 38 weeks and up to 39 weeks
1	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 39 weeks and up to 40 weeks
3	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 40 weeks and up to 41 weeks
4	closed pathways	Sep-2011	All Wales LHB (Provider)	Cardiology	Over 41 weeks and up to 45 weeks

Showing 1 to 100 of 1,312,015 rows

Page 1 of 13121

Next update expected:22 January 2026

Updates

• 18th December 2025:

  New month added and revisions applied to previous data where applicable

• 4th December 2025:

  New month added and revisions applied to previous data where applicable

• 23rd October 2025: Dataset first published.

Main information

• Designation: Accredited official statistics
• Data provider: Digital Health and Care Wales (DHCW)
• Data source: Referral to Treatment Times (RTT)

Overview

• Summary of dataset and variables:

  Information on referral to treatment (RTT) waiting times, reported by Local Health Boards. RTT is the period of time from referral by a GP or other medical practitioner to hospital for treatment in the NHS in Wales. An RTT pathway covers the time waited from referral to hospital for treatment in the NHS in Wales and includes time spent waiting for any hospital appointments, tests, scans or other procedures that may be needed before being treated.

• Data collection or calculation:

  The data presented draws on management information held by Local Health Boards relating to the management of patients who have been referred for hospital treatment. Guidance is provided to the NHS in Wales about how such patients should be managed and how to measure and report the relevant data. The data is reported monthly by Local Health Boards via the Digital Health and Care Wales Service (DHCW) switching service. The data collection has been in place since April 2007.

  Please find this information in the related statistical release, as per the given weblink.

  From 1st April 2019 health service provision for residents of Bridgend local authority moved from Abertawe Bro Morgannwg to Cwm Taf. For more information see the joint statement from Cwm Taf and Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University Health Boards. The health board names have changed with Cwm Taf University Health Board becoming Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board and Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University Health Board becoming Swansea Bay University Health Board.

• Statistical quality:

  Suspension of Betsi Cadwaladr health board data

  Due to data quality concerns, referral to treatment (RTT) data for Betsi Cadwaladr University (BCU) health board have been temporarily suspended. These concerns include anomalies in reported waiting list sizes and inconsistencies with operational activity levels, which have raised questions about the reliability of the data submitted. This suspension will remain in place until an external investigation into the quality and governance of the data is completed.

  In the interim, RTT statistics will be published excluding BCU data. Figures have been updated to September 2025 for the six health boards, but BCU and Wales data have not. Data up to August 2025 have been retained for BCU and Wales and will remain pending the outcome of the review.

  The chief statistician has published a blog describing the current situation with BCU data and the actions being undertaken to address the issues.

  Guidance on interpreting Wales and BCU data

  Although we recognise some recent months may be affected by the BCU data quality issues, we have retained the BCU and Wales data to August 2025. Some revisions may be made to the historic BCU data following the review, however these are not expected to be substantial. Some caution should be exercised when using the recent BCU data, and by extension, the Wales totals. When using Wales-level data, note that recent monthly figures may be revised in future, so avoid drawing firm conclusions from short-term fluctuations. For small groups, such as patients waiting two years, figures may change more noticeably because of their size. Any revisions will have a greater impact on BCU than Wales overall, but long-term patterns for both should be broadly reliable.

  A referral to treatment pathway (RTT) covers the time waiting from referral to hospital for treatment and includes time spent waiting for any hospital appointments, tests, scans or other procedures that may be needed before being treated.

  A patient pathway opens, and a waiting time begins, at the point a hospital receives a referral. Referrals are most commonly submitted by GPs but may also come from other health care professionals. The main activity measure for referral to treatment time is a count of the number of patient pathways which are open at the end of each month. This can be thought of as ‘the waiting list’.

  A patient pathway is closed if either the patient starts treatment, or if following consultation with a hospital specialist, no hospital treatment is necessary. This could include: patient admitted to hospital for an operation or treatment starting treatment that does not need a stay in hospital (for example, medication or physiotherapy) beginning the fitting of a medical device such as leg braces starting an agreed period of time to monitor the patient’s condition to assess the need for further treatment Patients with complex needs may have referrals for multiple types of treatments so may have many pathways opened and will appear in the dataset more than one time. This means that the same patient can have different pathways counted in the calculations for both targets.

  In March 2016, we changed some of the terminology used in referral to treatment reporting. Previously, when publishing these statistics, we used the terminology ‘patients’. However, some users misinterpreted this as unique patients. It is possible that a person could be on a number of different lists waiting for different conditions – i.e. there would be one patient but more than one pathway. Due to the RTT dataset being an aggregate data collection we’re not able to measure the number of unique patients. Therefore, we are using the terminology ‘patient pathways’, to better reflect the fact that one person can be on multiple waiting lists. The methodology use to measure and calculate these statistics has not changed. This is also more consistent with the other nations of the UK in their reporting of RTT.

  From April 2016, there has been a change in the treatment function codes submitted by the local health boards.

  More detailed treatment functions have been introduced recently but have not been used consistently across all Local Health Boards; for example, patients receiving vascular surgery may have been recorded in either “General Surgery” or “Vascular Surgery” treatment functions. To reduce uncertainty and make counts more reliable, the new functions will be removed temporarily and treatment functions will be recorded under the more general headings; for example, all patients receiving vascular surgery will now be published under “General Surgery” until consistent recording of treatment functions is confirmed across all Local Health Boards. This has now been fully actioned back to April 2016 when the new codes were introduced and will remain under general headings until the more detailed treatment functions are used consistently across Wales.

• Related reports:
  • NHS activity and performance summary, statistical release
  • NHS activity and performance summary: quality report

Published by

• Organisation: Welsh Government
• Contact email: stats.healthinfo@gov.wales

Metadata

The metadata for this dataset is not included when you download the data. You can download this separately. This contains all the information from the 'About this dataset' tab.