What countries have the longest wait times for healthcare?
Norway, at 176 days in 2024, has the longest median outside Latin America, and 85.8% of its hip patients waited more than three months. Spain, Canada and Australia all sit between 120 and 130 days.
The United Kingdom ranks 9th of 18 at 116 days, and 60.4% of its hip patients still waited more than three months. Poland and Hungary both saw their medians rise in recent years, with Poland moving from 75 days in 2023 to 91 in 2025 and Hungary from 34 to 64. Denmark, at 34 days, and Italy, at 45, are at the short end. It is worth noting that these figures measure from a specialist's decision to operate, so total wait times for surgery from a GP referral are longer in every country.
Do countries with free healthcare have long wait times?
The chart does not sort neatly by funding model. Denmark, which has a tax-funded universal system, records the shortest median hip-replacement wait at 34 days, while Norway, also publicly funded, records 176 days, the longest outside Latin America. The United Kingdom's NHS, another tax-funded system, sits at 116 days. Costa Rica and Chile, both with public insurance schemes, are above 300 days.
Italy, with a national health service, follows Denmark at 45 days. Canada, with single-payer provincial insurance, sits between 120 and 130 days. The pattern suggests that whether care is free at the point of use does not by itself determine how long patients wait for surgery wait times by country to converge; funding levels, hospital capacity and how countries manage elective lists all appear to matter. The OECD data do not include the United States, France or Germany, as those countries do not report this waiting-time measure.
What is the average wait time for surgery in the USA?
The OECD dataset behind this chart does not include the United States, because the US does not report a national hip-replacement waiting-time measure to the OECD. What data exist cover primary and specialist care more broadly. A 2025 survey by AMN Healthcare found the average wait for a physician appointment in major metro areas had stretched to 31 days, up 19 percent since 2022 and nearly 50 percent since 2004.1
For specialist care, new patients wait about two weeks for orthopedic surgery on average, according to the same source.1 Boston had the longest primary-care wait in the nation, at more than two months.1 These figures cover appointment waits rather than surgical scheduling, and the US does not publish a comparable national median for surgery wait times by country comparisons, so a direct comparison with the OECD hip-replacement data is not possible.
How might NHS waiting lists change over the next year?
NHS England releases its September waiting-list figures on Nov 12, 2026, which will give the first detailed read on whether the trend seen in the hip-replacement data is continuing.
Winter typically adds pressure to elective lists as emergency admissions rise and staff absences increase, which could slow further progress. Whether nhs waiting times improve, hold steady or worsen over the next year will depend in part on how NHS England manages that seasonal demand.