National Treatment Purchase Fund

Tuesday, 15 February 2022

Questions (694)

Alan Kelly

Question:

694. Deputy Alan Kelly asked the Minister for Health the number of procedures procured by the National Treatment Purchase Fund in 2021 and to date in 2022, by the type and speciality of each procedure in tabular form. [7642/22]

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Written answers

Minister for Health

The National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) procures capacity for high-volume procedures in order to positively impact waiting time for patients. Such procedures may be procured in both private hospitals (outsourcing), or public hospitals (insourcing). In order to ensure competitive pricing as part of their outsourcing programme, the NTPF works with private hospitals from a panel agreement and engages in procurement processes through e-tender.

In relation to insourcing, a public hospital may have some spare capacity but require further funding in order to utilise it. Such public hospitals may make a proposal to the NTPF, whereby the NTPF pay a fixed price per procedure performed. The amount paid by the NTPF meets the extra costs incurred by the public hospital in performing the procedures.

In relation to the information requested by the Deputy, the attached table provides data in respect of the number of IPDC and GI treatments arranged in 2021.

2021 Treatments Arranged IPDC
Specialty	Treatments Arranged
Cardiology	1,183
Cardio-Thoracic Surgery	57
Clinical Immunology	100
Gastro-Enterology	118
Gastro-Intestinal Surgery	40
General Medicine	34
General Surgery	3,644
Gynaecology	751
Neurosurgery	356
Ophthalmology	6,000
Orthopaedics	2,880
Otolaryngology (ENT)	1,501
Respiratory Medicine	147
Pain Relief	835
Plastic Surgery	445
Urology	4,139
Vascular Surgery	713
Grand Total	22,943

2021 Treatments Arranged GI
Specialty	Treatments Arranged
Gastro-Enterology	5,589
Gastro-Intestinal Surgery	375
General Medicine	2,197
General Surgery	8,745
Paed Gastro-Enterol	414
Grand Total	17,320