Waiting Time for New Case Booking at
Ear, Nose, Throat Specialist Out-patient Clinics

Specialist outpatient clinics have implemented a triage system to ensure patients with urgent conditions requiring early intervention are treated with priority. Referrals of new patients are usually first screened by a nurse and then by a specialist doctor of the relevant specialty for classification into Urgent, Semi-urgent and Stable categories. HA's targets are to maintain the median waiting time of Urgent and Semi-urgent cases within two weeks and eight weeks respectively.

In the past 12 months (01 April 2024 - 31 March 2025), there were 104,900 new case bookings in Ear, Nose, Throat Specialist Out-patient Clinics, with waiting time as follows:

	New case bookings(2)		Waiting Time
	Number	Percentage		Hong Kong East	Hong Kong West	Kowloon Central	Kowloon East	Kowloon West	New Territories East	New Territories West
Urgent Case	15,228	15%	Median	Less than 1 week	Less than 1 week	Less than 1 week	Less than 1 week	Less than 1 week	Less than 1 week	Less than 1 week
Semi-urgent Case	18,066	17%	Median	5 weeks	7 weeks	4 weeks	5 weeks	5 weeks	5 weeks	5 weeks
Stable Case	71,590	68%	Median	25 weeks	41 weeks	38 weeks	80 weeks	39 weeks	32 weeks	51 weeks
			Longest(1)	54 weeks	52 weeks	72 weeks	81 weeks	80 weeks	75 weeks	54 weeks

(For reference only)
Date of Next Update: 31 July 2025

Notes:
(1) The longest (90th percentile) waiting time implies that appointments are earlier than the indicated time in 90% of the new case bookings
(2) Excluding cases pending for triage
(3) With effect from 1 October 2022, the waiting time for new case booking at Specialist Out-patient Clinics has incorporated integrated clinics