The UK Hospitals Guide compares hospitals in the East Midlands for 29 operations and conditions, using figures published by national clinical audits and the NHS. It shows how many operations each hospital does, how its results compare with what is expected, how long people are waiting, and what patients said about their care.
What the guide is
For each operation or condition there is a table of hospitals or NHS trusts in the East Midlands with:
- Volume band: how many operations the hospital does, in bands set from the spread of all hospitals in the national data.
- Key outcome: a result such as deaths, repeat operations or complications, adjusted for the patients each hospital treats, with the banding or limits the audit itself publishes.
- Waiting time: the latest NHS referral to treatment waits for the specialty, cancer waiting times for cancer operations, and waits for related scans and tests.
- Patient experience: the trust's result in the Care Quality Commission's national patient surveys.
- CQC rating and a link to each hospital's page on this site.
How it differs from a league table
- Updated every month. Waiting times change monthly and are refreshed when NHS England publishes them. Audit results are refreshed when each audit publishes a new report.
- Outcomes, not just counts. Doing more operations is not the same as good results, so we show risk-adjusted outcomes alongside volumes.
- The source's own judgement. We only say a result is higher or lower than expected when the audit says so. We do not combine figures into a score or rank hospitals.
- NHS and private hospitals together where the data allows. The National Joint Registry covers private hospitals, so hip and knee replacement pages include them.
- Every figure has its period, source and licence. Nothing is collected from hospitals by questionnaire.
- Free. No subscription, no sign-up, no adverts on the guide data.
Choose an operation or condition
Bones and joints
- Hip replacement22 hospitals · Volumes, outcomes, waiting times, patient experience
- Knee replacement22 hospitals · Volumes, outcomes, waiting times, patient experience
- Hip fracture surgery9 hospitals · Volumes, outcomes, patient experience
- Carpal tunnel release9 NHS trusts · Trust activity, waiting times, patient experience
- Lumbar decompression (lower back surgery)9 NHS trusts · Trust activity, waiting times, patient experience
Cancer surgery
- Bowel cancer surgery10 NHS trusts · Volumes, outcomes, waiting times, patient experience
- Prostate cancer surgery (radical prostatectomy)5 NHS trusts · Volumes, outcomes, waiting times, patient experience
- Lung cancer surgery2 NHS trusts · Volumes, outcomes, waiting times, patient experience
- Breast cancer surgery10 NHS trusts · Volumes, outcomes, waiting times, patient experience
Heart and blood vessels
- Abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) repair6 NHS trusts · Volumes, outcomes, patient experience
- Carotid endarterectomy6 NHS trusts · Volumes, outcomes, patient experience
- Leg artery bypass and angioplasty (peripheral arterial disease)6 NHS trusts · Volumes, outcomes, patient experience
- Major leg amputation6 NHS trusts · Volumes, outcomes, patient experience
- Coronary artery bypass graft (heart bypass)9 NHS trusts · Trust activity, waiting times, patient experience
- Coronary angioplasty and stents9 NHS trusts · Trust activity, waiting times, patient experience
- Varicose vein treatment11 NHS trusts · Trust activity, waiting times, patient experience
Emergency care
General surgery
- Inguinal hernia repair9 NHS trusts · Trust activity, waiting times, patient experience
- Gallbladder removal9 NHS trusts · Trust activity, waiting times, patient experience
- Haemorrhoid (piles) surgery9 NHS trusts · Waiting times, patient experience
- Weight loss surgery9 NHS trusts · Waiting times, patient experience
Eyes, ears, nose and throat
Women's health and maternity
Kidneys, bladder and prostate
Data last updated 26 October 2026. Waiting times: August 2026. How we put the guide together.
Data checks for the East Midlands
- Trust codes with an '-X' suffix in HES 2023-24 and 2024-25. HES provider tables for 2023-24 and 2024-25 publish 17 trusts with an '-X' suffix. The suffix is gone in 2025-26. Trusts in the East Midlands among them: Lincolnshire Community Health Services NHS Trust. What we did: The guide only uses 2025-26 HES figures, so no '-X' figure is shown. Year-on-year HES trends are not shown for any trust.
- Fall in cataract operations in HES 2025-26. National C75 episodes fell from 677,116 (2024-25) to 573,088 (2025-26). Eye operations (chapter C) at independent-sector providers fell 18% (452,855 to 370,130) while NHS trusts fell 2% (564,620 to 551,555). Eye operations at NHS trusts in the East Midlands fell 5% (38,410 to 36,570). Outpatient HES 2025-26 shows almost no cataract operations, so the activity has not moved to outpatient records. What we did: The national cataract figure is shown with a warning that 2025-26 independent-sector recording looks incomplete. Trust figures for the East Midlands are shown as published.
- NELA: hospitals with low case ascertainment or suppressed counts. In the East Midlands: Glenfield Hospital (17% case ascertainment, fewer than 10 cases); Kettering General Hospital (58% case ascertainment); King's Mill Hospital (0% case ascertainment). Their mortality figures are based on very few patients or on incomplete records. What we did: Shown as 'Not published (small numbers)'; low case ascertainment (below 70%) is noted on the row.
How we put it together
We use published national data only: the National Joint Registry, the National Hip Fracture Database, the National Emergency Laparotomy Audit, the Sentinel Stroke National Audit Programme, the national cancer audits (bowel, breast, prostate and lung), the National Vascular Registry, NHS England's Hospital Episode Statistics and waiting time statistics, UK Health Security Agency infection data, and Care Quality Commission surveys and ratings. Each is reproduced under the Open Government Licence or a Creative Commons Attribution licence.
Some figures are for a single hospital and some for a whole NHS trust, which may run several hospitals. Each table says which. Read the methodology and data dictionary for the definitions, the volume bands and the checks we made before publishing.
This guide is information, not medical advice. Talk to your GP or consultant about your own care.
Sources
We checked this guide against these official pages on 26 October 2026.
- National Joint Registry transparency data (data.gov.uk) (National Joint Registry)
- National Hip Fracture Database annual report 2026 data (Royal College of Physicians)
- National Emergency Laparotomy Audit: eleventh annual report (NELA)
- Sentinel Stroke National Audit Programme results (data.gov.uk) (SSNAP)
- National Bowel Cancer Audit State of the Nation report 2026 (NATCAN)
- National Vascular Registry 2025 State of the Nation report (VSQIP)
- Hospital Admitted Patient Care Activity 2025-26 (NHS England)
- Consultant-led Referral to Treatment Waiting Times 2026-27 (NHS England)
- Adult inpatient survey (Care Quality Commission)
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