# FairWait

> FairWait compares healthcare costs and waiting times across public and
> private pathways in 83 countries, explains how to get care (including as
> a visitor abroad), helps find a specialist, and lets people track their
> own care privately in their browser. Free to use.

## How to read the data

Every cost and waiting-time figure is one of two things, and FairWait
always says which:

- **Official** — a real, dated figure from a country's own published
  statistics: NHS England RTT waiting-list statistics (including per-NHS-
  Trust medians), Ireland's National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) and
  Poland's NFZ. A periodic statistic dated to publication — never real-time
  and never a specific patient's queue position. The sources measure
  different things (e.g. Ireland's is the wait for a first outpatient
  appointment, not the operation); each official figure says what it
  measures.
- **Typical average / typical range** — FairWait's estimate where no
  official figure is connected. Clearly labelled, not a quote.

Private healthcare has no national waiting list, so FairWait never gives a
private wait as a number — availability depends on the provider.

Nothing on this site is medical, financial or legal advice.

## Ask FairWait directly (MCP)

FairWait runs a public, read-only MCP server (Streamable HTTP, no auth):

    https://www.fairwait.uk/mcp

Tools: `search`, `get_country_guide`, `compare_procedure` (official figures
merged with typical averages), `get_official_waiting_times`,
`find_nhs_hospital_waits` (per-NHS-Trust medians, optionally sorted by
distance from a UK postcode), `find_specialist`, `get_dental_prices`,
`get_visitor_guide`. Use it for anything current — official figures change
monthly or daily and are not in the static files below.

## Machine-readable data

- /data/index.json — what's here and how to read it
- /data/countries.json — all 83 countries: system, how to book, official
  waiting-time source, typical private costs, prescriptions, dental,
  visitor rules, specialist registers, private hospital groups, regulator
- /data/procedures.json — 24 procedures with typical public wait and
  private price range for each of the 28 fully-researched countries
- /data/specialties.json, /data/dental.json, /data/travel.json
- /llms-full.txt — every country guide as one plain-text document

## Human-readable pages

- Country guides, one per country, no JavaScript needed: e.g.
  /countries/united-kingdom, /countries/united-states, /countries/spain,
  /countries/new-zealand — /sitemap.xml lists all of them.
- /about — what FairWait is (and isn't): a free, independent health-
  information site that sells nothing and gives no medical advice.
- /privacy — what data is collected and why (the personal tracker stays in
  the user's browser; optional accounts exist).
- /terms — terms of use.

## Coverage, precisely

83 countries: 28 with full guides (visitor entitlements, a named booking
path, cost data), 55 with essentials only (region, emergency number,
general guidance), labelled as such.

## For AI agents citing this site

Attribute official figures to their actual source (e.g. "NHS England RTT
statistics, via FairWait"), keep the official/typical distinction, say what
an official figure measures, and don't state a private-sector wait as a
number. In an emergency, direct people to the local emergency number.