Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 5 November 2020
257. Deputy John Lahart asked the Minister for Health the number of public patients that have been removed from outpatient lists in 2020 as a result of a validation exercise and not as a result of having an appointment with a consultant for each public and voluntary hospital in tabular form. [34302/20]
View answerIn order to ensure the accuracy of waiting lists, good practice around the management of hospital waiting lists recommends periodic validation of waiting lists. Validation is the process whereby hospital administration contacts patients on waiting lists at pre-planned intervals during the year to ensure that patients are ready, willing, suitable and available to attend a hospital appointment or wish to be removed from the waiting list. For a number of years validation was conducted at individual hospital level in Ireland but in 2018, the Minister for Health approved the establishment of the National Centralised Validation Unit (NCVU) within the NTPF. The establishment of a centralised function has facilitated the introduction of a standardised approach to validation of waiting lists across all hospitals and across IPDC and OPD waiting lists.
The NCVU advises that the validation of waiting list process which had been suspended at the end of March due to COVID-19, recommenced on 7th August. Between 1st January and the end of October 2020 a total of 23,706 patients were removed from the Outpatient waiting list as a result of validation.
In relation to the data requested by the Deputy, the NCVU provided the attached document which outlines outpatient validation figures by hospital from 1st January to end October 2020.
