Overview
- One in five patients (19.6%) had been waiting more than six months, within a backlog of 832,728 people measured as of June 30, 2025.
- Madrid records the shortest surgical wait at 49 days, with only 0.5% waiting over six months, 70,971 patients pending and a rate of 9.96 per 1,000 residents.
- Galicia averages 69 days to surgery, 50 days below the national mean, with 4.24% of patients waiting longer than half a year.
- The longest average waits are reported in Andalucía (160 days), Cataluña (148) and Extremadura (130), while Andalucía leads improvement with a 20.7% drop in pending patients and a 46‑day cut in delay.
- By specialty, plastic surgery has the longest mean wait at 259 days followed by neurosurgery at 173, and the ministry is developing a new information system to improve transparency and comparisons.