Time is a fundamental dimension of human experience, providing the temporal backdrop to life’s beginning, progression and ending. Perhaps nowhere is time experienced more acutely than in relation to instances of ill health and the need for care. These are key sites for understanding the operation of time—how it is felt, lived, managed and made meaningful both in healthcare settings and in everyday life. In contrast to the steady march of incremental ‘clock’ time that structures both the orderly operation of daily life and, often, our expectations of how the future may unfold, illness and care can render time non-linear, as discontinuous, and qualitatively and relationally different to ‘well’ time. This volume takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on research across varied international and empirical contexts to give rich insight into how time is a useful lens into understanding health and illness, how time is institutionalised with respect to healthcare, the normative functioning of time and its lived multiplicity. The chapters contained here elucidate how considerations of time—its ontological standing, normative value, and embodied and intersubjective experience—are vital to understanding the lived experience of health and illness. These analyses offer critical perspectives on the governance of both the institutions that provide formal (health)care and the cultures that circulate around (and often obscure) informal care. The main contribution of the volume is to explore and theorise the tensions that emerge between how time is typically ‘treated’ and how it is experienced in relation to moments (of whatever duration) of illness and care.