Billy Kelleher
Question:1307 Deputy Billy Kelleher asked the Minister for Health the mean waiting time in 2010, the mean wait in 2011; and the latest available data for mean waiting times. [18580/12]
View answerWednesday, 18 April 2012
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The Special Delivery Unit was established in my Department last July to tackle patient wait times for hospital services. Unacceptably high wait times have been tolerated for too long and have become systemic for both unscheduled and scheduled care. The problems have to be tackled step by step so that improvements can be sustained. The SDU immediately began work with the HSE and the NTPF on the problem of trolley waits and long waits for inpatient care. Last July I introduced a 12 month limit beyond which no hospital could keep a patient waiting for inpatient or day case treatment. There is no room for complacency but progress is being made. Since December the number of patients waiting on trolleys has been consistently lower than the same period last year and 94% of hospitals met the 12 month target for scheduled care. As a result some patients have had a better quality of service than would otherwise have been the case. I believe I have also demonstrated through this initiative that, even in the challenging times we face, it is possible to exert control over the system and deliver improvements. This has been achieved by the SDU, the NTPF and the HSE working together to rigorously manage performance.
The latest available data for the mean waiting time shows that at the end of December 2010 it was 2.4 months, at the end of December 2011 it was 2.8 months and up to the end of March this year the figure was 2.9 months.