The National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) was established to tackle the issue of excessive waiting times for hospital treatment for public patients. The Fund has been very successful in fulfilling this remit and has arranged treatment for almost 175,000 patients to date. On average, public patients now wait 3 months for their operations, down from between two and five years before the NTPF was established. The NTPF does not normally send patients for treatment outside Ireland. This was done some years ago, when there was insufficient capacity in some specialties in the private system in Ireland. That capacity now exists here. The Fund arranges, where convenient, for patients living in Border counties to be treated in private facilities in Northern Ireland.
Year
|
Numbers treated abroad
|
|
UK
|
NI
|
USA
|
2005
|
209
|
544
|
16
|
2006
|
140
|
624
|
13
|
2007
|
82
|
766
|
|
2008
|
2
|
708
|
|
2009
|
Nil
|
1,024
|
|