Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 27 September 2012
5. Deputy Seamus Healy asked the Minister for Health the extent of the waiting list, numbers and waiting times for in-patient and out-patient ear nose and throat services at Waterford Regional Hospital; and the measures he will take to address this situation. [41228/12]
View answerData on inpatient and day case waiting lists are collected by the National Treatment Purchase Fund. There are currently 136 adults on the in-patient and day case waiting list for ear, nose and throat services at Waterford regional hospital. A total of 73 adults are waiting for an inpatient procedure and 63 adults are waiting for a day case procedure. One patient is waiting longer than nine months but I am pleased to say that the nine month waiting time target set in the HSE service plan will be met. Overall, the numbers now waiting are down more than 28% on the numbers waiting in January this year.
There are currently 88 children waiting. A total of 21 children are waiting for inpatient treatment and 67 for day case treatment, with one child waiting longer than three months. I welcome the fact that the hospital is on course to meet the 20 week waiting time target set in the HSE service plan and that the numbers waiting are down by more than half on the January 2012 position. At that time, 197 children were waiting, of whom 115 had been waiting longer than three months.
These significant improvements in waiting times are evidence that the approach taken by the special delivery unit and the clinical programmes to address access to in-patient and day case procedures is having an effect.
I welcome the response from the Minister but he has only dealt with in-patient services. My question deals with both inpatient and outpatient services. The point of my question is the outpatient services. Nearly every day, parents contact me about the waiting lists for outpatient clinics at the hospital. I am informed by parents that an urgent case may have to wait for 18 months for outpatient ENT services. A number of parents have contacted me about the ear and hearing clinic waiting times. There is a significant waiting list for outpatient clinics. There appears to be a significant delay and I ask the Minister to examine that whole area.
In the case of children, for example, there is a particular urgency attached to diagnosis and treatment of hearing problems. Otherwise, there may well be a significant situation in terms of progress at school or preschool. In the case of tonsillitis, a failure to access treatment in a timely fashion may impinge on school attendance. Will the Minister refer specifically in his response to the statistics on access to outpatient clinics?
As I indicated in response to a previous question, we have only begun to get a handle on outpatient waiting times. A major difficulty in this regard is that the relevant statistics were never accurately counted in the past. The validation of all outpatient waiting lists commenced in June 2012. In respect of regional ear, nose and throat, ENT, services, GP referrals from the five south-eastern counties are received at Waterford Regional Hospital and patients are seen either at that hospital or at hospital and community clinics across the south east. Prior to the validation process, there were 8,319 patients on the outpatient waiting list, which now stands at 4,570. Of these, 2,337 have been on the list for up to one year, 1,179 for one to two years, 769 for two to three years, and 285 for three to four years. The figures are not broken down to show how many of the patients are children.
Although I covered this issue in an earlier question, I would like to make some comments from my own practice experience over the years. In regard to tonsillectomies, the first point to make is that the thinking around this procedure is changing. Second, my experience as a GP was that where I referred a child with tonsillitis symptoms to a paediatrician for assessment, eight times out of ten that child would not be referred for a tonsillectomy. On the other hand, if I sent the child to the surgical service, the old maxim, "If in doubt, whip it out" seemed to apply. My point is that we need to review this whole area of treatment, a task that is currently being undertaken in a major way in the United Kingdom.
That being said, the figures I have given for outpatient waiting times are clearly unacceptable. Our focus in this regard will be to deal in the first instance with those patients who have been waiting longest, as we did in respect of inpatient procedures. Our target is that by the end of next year, nobody will be waiting longer than one year. If we can ensure that patients are seen by the right people, in the right place and at the right time, many of these referrals might not be necessary.
The figures the Minister has given are completely unacceptable and indicate that what parents have been saying to me and other Deputies is accurate. Does the Minister have in mind any short-time measures which could be activated quickly to ease the backlog? As I said, I have spoken to parents whose children are waiting 18 months for what their GPs have indicated is urgently required treatment. It is entirely unacceptable that 285 people are waiting up to four years to be seen, 769 between two and three years, and 1,179 between one and two years.
I will not go into detail now, but I can certainly revert to the Deputy on this issue. A plan is being put in place to address this problem and to ensure those waiting longest are seen first. I will get back to the Deputy in regard to the exact plan as it applies to ENT services at Waterford Regional Hospital. That situation will be addressed in much the same way as we are addressing similar situations elsewhere in the country.
