About the data
If you're a journalist, researcher, clinic, or just a careful reader — here's exactly how HonestER's numbers work, including their limits.
Where the data comes from
Every number on this site comes from an anonymous form filled out by someone after their own ER or walk-in visit. Nothing is pulled from hospital systems, provincial health authorities, or any official record. See our About page for why we collect it this way.
How a "wait time" is calculated
A facility's displayed wait is the average time between check-in and being seen by a doctor, across all reports submitted for that facility in the last 14 days. Older reports age out of the average automatically, so the number reflects recent experience, not all-time history.
How we handle duplicates and outliers
Right now, every submitted report is included in the average as-is — we don't currently detect or remove duplicate submissions or statistical outliers (like a single unusually long or short visit). With a small number of total reports, one unusual entry can shift an average more than it would once there's a larger, steadier volume of reports. This is exactly why we show a confidence tier next to each wait time (see below) instead of presenting every number with equal certainty.
What the confidence tiers mean
- High confidence — 10 or more reports in the last 48 hours
- Moderate confidence — 3 to 9 reports in the last 48 hours
- Limited data — 1 to 2 reports in the last 48 hours
- No recent data — nothing reported in the last 48 hours; treat the number as potentially outdated
How facilities are identified
When you search for a hospital or clinic while reporting a visit, we match it against Google's directory of real places so "Surrey Memorial," "surrey hospital," and similar variations all point to the same facility record, rather than creating duplicates.
How staff ratings are moderated
Ratings for a named doctor or nurse are held back from public view until a site administrator manually approves them. This exists because publishing an unverified claim about an identifiable person instantly carries real risk — both to that person and to the credibility of the platform. Overall facility ratings and wait times are not held back, since they don't name an individual.
What HonestER does not know
- We don't know whether a report is from a real visit or fabricated — there's no way to verify identity on an anonymous platform, by design.
- We don't know a facility's official, hospital-reported wait time, and we don't claim to.
- We don't adjust for the type or severity of each visit when calculating an average — a broken bone and a minor cut are both just "a report" in the average, even though CTAS would treat them very differently in real triage.
Privacy
We don't collect names, emails, or IP addresses tied to reports. See the About page for the full explanation of what we collect and why.