A surgical taskforce has drastically reduced how many NSW patients are waiting too long for planned surgery.

Since coming to office in March, the Minns government has prioritised tackling the planned surgery waitlist that had about 17,000 people waiting longer than clinically recommended.

Health Minister Ryan Park says that figure has now dropped to 11,000.

"Some of the best surgeons, anaesthetists, nurses, allied health care workers across the state (were) all focused on driving down elective surgery numbers," he told parliament during Question Time on Tuesday.

"In the space of a few months, we have dropped the number of people waiting outside clinically recommended timeframes."

He did not say the current position of the overall waiting list for planned surgery.

When the taskforce was announced on March 28, the waiting list stood at about 100,000 people, including 4000 children.

At that time, Mr Park said he wanted to move away from using the term "elective surgery".

"(Elective) sounds like people had a choice - this is surgery people are living in pain waiting for," he said.