Elective surgery waiting times by hospital and surgical specialty, Australia

As it appears in data.json.

GET https://publicdata.au/d/au-elective-surgery-waiting-times-by-specialty/latest/data.json
{
  "reporting_unit": "National",
  "reporting_unit_type": "National",
  "state": "NAT",
  "peer_group": null,
  "year": "2011–12",
  "surgical_specialty": "Cardio-thoracic surgery",
  "surgeries": 12111,
  "median_wait_days": 16,
  "peer_group_median_days": null,
  "share_waited_over_365_days": 0.001,
  "peer_group_average": null,
  "suppressed": []
}Copy

Each filter is field=operator.value in the query string, and every filter must match. A number or date field compares as a number or date, and a text field compares as text. Values are case-sensitive, except that like and ilike ignore case in the ASCII letters A to Z. Prefix not. to negate a filter, as not.eq.value.

Without a version the API answers from the newest version, and that answer changes when the publisher releases again. Put versions/<date>/ before rows or aggregate for an answer from that version alone. Every version with a table can be queried, and /api/v1/datasets/<slug>/versions lists them. A query on a version the database does not hold is read from its Parquet file, and one that would read too much of it is refused with DuckDB SQL that answers it from the file. The 1 newest version is loaded; versions lists them.

The API allows 60 requests in 10 seconds from one address. Above that it answers 429 for 10 seconds with a Retry-After header, a RateLimit-Policy header and a JSON body that gives the limit. Every API answer carries the same RateLimit-Policy. A client should wait the Retry-After seconds, or read the files, which have no limit. openapi.json describes this dataset's query paths for client generators and agents.

https://publicdata.au/mcp is a remote MCP server over Streamable HTTP with the same tools, defined in the same place, so a tool added to the pages is added here too. It needs no key and no account. Its row tools and the query API answer every version through one query path, so a tool's answer and the query URL it cites give the same rows. A query that would read too much of a file is refused with DuckDB SQL that answers it from the file. It also has search and fetch, the two tools ChatGPT's deep research and company knowledge call by name, which run search_datasets and read a dataset's record in the shapes those features expect. The row tools are held to the query API's limit of 60 queries in 10 seconds from one address, and each call is two queries because it also counts the matching rows. Add it to Claude Code with claude mcp add --transport http publicdata https://publicdata.au/mcp, add the URL in Claude as a custom connector, or give it to any client that connects to remote MCP servers. Each dataset with a table is also a resource at https://publicdata.au/d/<slug>/fields.json, which lists its fields with their types, the publisher's descriptions, their ranges and the values they hold, so an agent can read a dataset's shape before it writes a query.