Methodology
Every figure on HospitalCheck comes from an official public dataset, ingested unmodified and traceable to its source file. We never estimate, model or generate numbers.
Referral to Treatment (RTT) waiting times
NHS EnglandWaiting-list size, % within 18 weeks, median and 92nd-percentile waits, and 52/65/78-week counts, per trust and specialty.
Updated: Monthly (published ~6 weeks after the period, on the 2nd Thursday)
A&E attendances & emergency admissions
NHS EnglandAttendances, 4-hour performance and 12-hour decision-to-admit waits per trust.
Updated: Monthly
CQC care directory & ratings
Care Quality CommissionThe regulator's register of hospital locations and each location's latest overall inspection rating.
Updated: Monthly directory file
NHS Organisation Data Service
NHS EnglandThe canonical register of NHS trusts and hospital sites, used to link everything together.
Updated: Continuous
Principles
- Trust-wide labelling.NHS England publishes waiting times and A&E data per trust, not per building. When a hospital page shows a trust-level figure it is always marked “Trust-wide”.
- Period labelling. Every figure shows the month it describes. NHS data publishes with a ~6-week lag; a figure labelled May describes May, not today.
- No invented numbers.If a dataset doesn't cover a hospital, the section simply doesn't appear. We never fill gaps with estimates.
- Licensing. Data is reused under the Open Government Licence v3.0 with attribution to NHS England and the Care Quality Commission.