Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 23 October 2018
75. Deputy John Lahart asked the Minister for Health the action he will take to address the long outpatient waiting times in Tallaght University Hospital in which 6,269 persons are waiting more than 18 months for an appointment [43577/18]
View answerWhat action will the Minister take to address the long outpatient waiting times in Tallaght University Hospital, where over 6,000 have been waiting more than 18 months for an appointment?
I thank Deputy Lahart for this question. As I already said to his colleagues, Deputies MacSharry and Curran, reducing the outpatient waiting list and reducing waiting times in general is a priority and must remain a priority for Government, for all of us in this House and for the health service. That is why we have in working with the Deputy's party increased the level of funding for the NTPF from €55 million in 2018 to €75 million in 2019, of which there will be ringfenced funding of probably €6 million, although I am finalising that figure for outpatient activity.
To date in 2018, the NTPF has approved almost 12,700 additional first-time outpatient appointments and this is projected to increase to 40,000 appointments next year. I recently met with the chief executive officers, CEOs, of all hospital groups and the CEO of Tallaght University Hospital to invite them to bring forward new and innovative proposals to address the number of long waiters on outpatient lists in 2019. We now have the funding for this and I want to receive as many ideas as possible.
To date this year the NTPF has approved proposals to treat more than 2,200 outpatients across a range of specialties at Tallaght University Hospital, through the provision of an additional 177 outpatient clinics.
Tallaght University Hospital advises it has a waiting list decision support system in place which plans and forecasts outpatient demand, allowing the hospital to ensure planned improvements are delivered. Tallaght University Hospital has also recently recruited new consultants in orthopaedics, neurology, and ENT, additional advanced nurse practitioners in rheumatology, and has additional physio-led clinics in specialties such as gynaecology. This is very important as an innovative approach. I thank Tallaght University Hospital for the work it has done.
The longest waiting periods for outpatients are particularly in ENT, dermatology, urology, neurology, gynaecology and orthopaedics. I will consider this specifically in the context of the NTPF's outpatient plan for 2019 and I look forward to receiving proposals from the Dublin Midlands Hospital Group.
The Ceann Comhairle may have noticed that the most mentioned acronym today is NTPF. Fine Gael abolished it. In what way had Fine Gael hoped to deal with this issue, going back six or seven years? The Minister's answers this afternoon have all been peppered with the NTPF. It was a Fianna Fáil invention. Fine Gael scrapped it and did not want to countenance it in the confidence and supply agreement. The Government had to be persuaded. That is a genuine question. In what way had Fine Gael hoped to deal with the waiting lists? What was Fine Gael's and the Government's big idea?
The Minister said for the second time since I came in here this afternoon that he welcomes ideas. He is the Minister and he is elected. He comes from a party that is supposed to be full of ideas. What are his ideas?
The Deputy's supplementary question takes us in a slightly different direction but I am very happy to engage on it. I always find this point quite bizarre because if Deputy Lahart had been the Minister for Health in 2011 and had gone into the Department of Health in Hawkins House, he would have needed good luck to find money to put into any initiative because of the state Fianna Fáil left the country in. I am honoured to be the Minister for Health at a time of expansionary budgets. The Deputy should remember that health budgets had to be cut during his party's last tenure and the beginning of my party's tenure. The NTPF was wound up but it was not as if the then Minister, Senator James Reilly, had lots of options for initiatives to fund.
He was left with extraordinarily difficult decisions. I am not afraid to embrace good ideas and I believe the NTPF is a good idea. It was not necessarily run in the best way in the past. It cherry-picked patients and allowed people who had not necessarily waited the longest to be seen. Therefore it did not prioritise the longest-waiting patients. It had a self-referral system that allowed a degree of cherry-picking and it did not do nearly enough insourcing. When it came to negotiating the confidence and supply agreement, the Deputy's party only looked for €15 million for it and today I am criticised for not putting more money into it even though we are allocating €75 million.
The NTPF has a role to play and I am very happy that it is playing a role. It is important that its role is also about insourcing and not just outsourcing, and that it targets those waiting longest. The Deputy's local hospital in Tallaght is beginning to see the benefit of that investment and I hope we will see more in 2019.
The chief executive officer of Tallaght Hospital, Mr. Slevin, is very innovative when it comes to the NTPF.
He definitely is.
I know the area covers part of the Minister's constituency.
Getting back to our discussion, Fine Gael had a big idea, which was universal health insurance. It abolished the HSE and scrapped the NTPF. Universal health insurance was going to sort everything out. Then Fine Gael decided it would not work. It then decided it needed the HSE, having abolished the board. It is now going to re-establish the board. Where are the great ideas on health and innovation in health because the Minister is looking for ideas? Fine Gael had several great ideas in 2011; each and every one of which has been abandoned.
I wish to focus on the neurology figures in Tallaght Hospital. In 2016 there were 480 on the waiting list and it is now up to 1,322 - close to 1,500. These are people who may have multiple sclerosis or have suffered a stroke. Rather than figures, what does the Minister say to the close relations of such people who come to my clinics and are incredibly anxious? It must be remembered that this is a waiting list just to get the appointment; it is not for treatment. What can I say to my constituents when I go back to them?
What the Deputy can say to them is that I am very pleased that we have now hired new consultants in neurology in Tallaght. As he rightly said, many of my constituents also go to that hospital so I firmly accept the need for that.
Here is my big idea on health. My big idea was not to be the Minister who decided to come up with a big bright plan that would last for my tenure, but instead to work with people on all sides of this House to develop the Sláintecare plan. Fianna Fáil's big idea was to set up the HSE, which clearly did not work. The next big idea was to leave Mary Harney in the Department of Health and Children for years and not have Fianna Fáil Ministers touch it. We had big ideas; lots of Ministers had big ideas.
What we actually need is a cross-party plan on health that will outlast my tenure in the Department of Health. If the Deputy is the next Minister for Health, it might also outlast his tenure. We have plan, called Sláintecare that every party in this House has bought into. I believe that is the kind of bipartisan approach to healthcare policy that people want to see.
