NHS Wait Helper

Hospital waiting times

Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust: NHS waiting times

At the end of August 2026, 67,228 people were on the Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust all-services waiting list and about 6 in 10 people (60%) had been waiting less than 18 weeks.

NHS trust · West Midlands · ODS code RXK

People waiting (all services)
67,228
End of August 2026
Under 18 weeks
60.1%
England: 65.2%
Over 52 weeks
461
Services reported
16
with people currently waiting

461 people (0.7%, roughly 1 in 143) had been waiting more than 52 weeks.

Figures are for the whole organisation (trust level), not for an individual hospital site or clinic. The all-services total is the published organisation total, not a sum of the service rows.

Waiting times by service

Each row is one consultant-led service at this organisation, compared with the England figure for the same service in the same month.

Services at Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust
ServiceWaitingUnder 18 weeksEnglandOver 52 weeks6-month change
Ophthalmology7,98379%72.2%9+5.1 pp
Ear, nose and throat (ENT)7,46839%56.8%210-5.5 pp
Orthopaedics6,09559%60.9%28+0.7 pp
Gynaecology5,26657%59.6%11+1 pp
Cardiology4,98050%67.9%27+1.8 pp
General surgery4,70864%63.2%13+3.2 pp
Urology3,85262%64.8%3-2.4 pp
Dermatology3,79156%69.0%4-4.5 pp
Respiratory medicine1,88282%74.1%0+3.9 pp
Gastroenterology1,81550%69.7%10+14.9 pp
Neurology1,57549%62.3%0+13.3 pp
Oral surgery1,04347%53.8%16-33.2 pp
Plastic surgery67561%59.4%1+2.5 pp
Rheumatology62293%70.4%0-1.5 pp
Elderly medicine46100%84.3%0+2.5 pp
Cardiothoracic surgery12100%73.6%00 pp

How this has changed

Between July 2025 and August 2026 the share of people waiting at Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust waiting under 18 weeks stayed broadly stable (58% to 60%).

Share waiting under 18 weeks: broadly unchanged over 3 months (61.5% in May 2026); broadly unchanged over 6 months (58.4% in February 2026); up 2.6 points over 12 months (57.5% in August 2025).

Share seen within 18 weeks, month by month

18-week performance broadly stable · +2.5 points

Percentage of people seen within 18 weeks, over the last 14 published months.

View these figures as a table
Percentage seen within 18 weeks by month
MonthWithin 18 weeks
July 202557.6%
August 202557.5%
September 202559.3%
October 202557.7%
November 202558.5%
December 202559.4%
January 202656.9%
February 202658.4%
March 202663%
April 202662.3%
May 202661.5%
June 202661.8%
July 202660.4%
August 202660.1%

Changes of less than 3 percentage points in the share waiting under 18 weeks are treated as broadly stable. This describes the whole waiting list, not how long any one person waits.

Month-by-month figures
Monthly all-services figures for Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust
MonthWaitingUnder 18 weeksOver 52 weeks
July 202563,80557.6%1,022
August 202565,60457.5%956
September 202566,52459.3%902
October 202564,75557.7%812
November 202567,61958.5%661
December 202565,72559.4%466
January 202664,23656.9%541
February 202666,87258.4%623
March 202665,75763.0%346
April 202665,63062.3%319
May 202666,14561.5%369
June 202666,74461.8%291
July 202667,23360.4%368
August 202667,22860.1%461

Diagnostic tests

Tests are measured against a separate six-week standard. Figures for June 2026.

Nearby NHS trusts

Trusts within 25 miles that report waiting figures. Distances are between registered addresses, not travel time.

  • Birmingham Women's and Children's NHS Foundation Trust · 2.4 mi23,360 waiting · 66%
  • University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust · 2.7 mi96,303 waiting · 67%
  • Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust · 2.7 mi15,544 waiting · 82%
  • The Royal Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Foundation Trust · 4.9 mi13,473 waiting · 66%
  • Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust · 6.6 mi28,492 waiting · 73%

Waiting times across this area

This organisation is covered by the following area pages, which compare the published figures of every NHS trust in the same area.

Contact details we hold for this organisation

Appointment letters carry the contact route for the team holding the referral. We only list contact details we have checked against the organisation's own published pages, and none are listed here yet.

What these figures cannot tell you

  • Where you are in a queue, or when you will be seen or treated.
  • How urgent your own referral is. These are aggregate waiting-list figures and do not show the clinical priority of an individual patient.
  • Anything about a specific consultant, clinic or site within a trust.
  • What will happen next month: these are end-of-month snapshots of a past period.

Related guides on this site

Related pages

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