Vol. 498 No. 5
156 Mr. Shatter asked the Minister for Health and Children the areas of speciality in respect of each hospital declining to make appointments for people to attend with consultants under the general medical services scheme in view of the inability of the hospital and the consultant concerned to cope with the needs of existing patients. [27930/98]
My Department does not collect information on the non-scheduling of hospital appointments in particular specialities. While in certain circumstances, hospital facilities may be closed on a temporary basis to enable activity to be brought into line with service plan targets and available funding, the scheduling of consultant out-patient clinics would not normally be directly used for these purposes. It would be expected, however, that the schedule of appointments for patients would be related to overall projected activity in a particular speciality and would take account of the clinical needs of individual patients.
It is important that, in the event of the non-scheduling of hospital appointments, these are viewed in the context of overall levels of activity delivered in the acute hospital sector against agreed service plans. It should be noted in this regard that overall acute hospital in-patient activity for January to September 1998 shows an increase of 1.11 per cent over the same period in 1997 and there is a corresponding increase in day activity of 6.78 per cent.
