Immediately following his appointment, the Minister for Health established the Special Delivery Unit, as set out in the Programme for Government. The aim of the SDU is to unblock access to acute services by improving the flow of patients through the system. The initial focus for the SDU's Scheduled Care Team has been on waiting times for in-patient and daycase elective surgery.
For adults, the target is that no-one should be waiting more than nine months for inpatient and day case treatments. Overall, by the end of September progress towards the target is strong – the number waiting more than nine months has fallen by more than 90% on the figure at the start of the year (4678 in Jan down to 415 in September). For children, the target is that by the end of 2012 no child should be waiting for inpatient or daycase treatment for more than 20 weeks. Again, huge progress has been made towards this target – by the end of September the number of children waiting longer than 20 weeks nationally was down to 276 from 1,844 at the start of the year.
Improving access to outpatient services is the next priority. A maximum waiting time target has now been set of 12 months for a first time outpatient appointment by 30 November 2013. In relation to the specific query raised by the Deputy, as this is a service matter it has been referred to the HSE for direct reply.
