Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 30 March 2023
320. Deputy David Cullinane asked the Minister for Health the number of persons on diagnostic waiting lists at the end of quarter 1 2023; the number for each quarter of 2022; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [15954/23]
View answerThe HSE advises that a pilot project commenced in 2016 by the HSE Acute Hospitals Division to progress the collection of national radiology waiting list data. The project has been supported by the Radiology Clinical Care Programme and has involved key stakeholders across the system including the National Integrated Medical Imaging System (NIMIS) Team, Hospital Groups, and the support of the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) for data collection and data management expertise.
The information that is currently being collected is presently being tested and validated at hospital, hospital group and national level and as such should not be used/reported without the context of the caveats set out below:
- Data is subject to inclusions and exclusions which are documented in the Data Profile Document. This document is available from Acute Operations and has been circulated to all Hospital Groups.
- Data contains urgent, routine and surveillance/planned activity which is currently not broken down in detail, as such this includes surveillance/planned activity which may not be exceeding planned date.
- Data is still undergoing validation at Hospital and Hospital Group level. Data does not take into account local nuances at site level (Site profile developed to support understanding of same).
- The purpose of this aggregate data is to provide a National Level overview of the number of patients waiting for modalities of CT, MRI and Ultrasound.
- This report is not intended to be used for the active management of hospital diagnostics waiting list, local reports and mechanisms should continue to be used for the management of diagnostics waiting lists at hospital level.
In relation to the number of persons on diagnostic waiting lists at the end of quarter 1 2023, the National Treatment Purchase Fund will commence collating this data at the end of March and the Quarter 1 report will be available sometime after that.
While I have previously provided the Deputy with the Quarter 1,3 and 4 reports in response to earlier PQ they are again attached for ease of reference.
Diagnostic waiting list report Q1 2022
Diagnostic waiting list report Q2 2022
Diagnostic waiting list report Q3 2022
Diagnostic waiting list report Q4 2022
The Quarter 2 2022 report sets out waiting list data for CT, MRI and Ultrasound. The HSE advises that, at present, further diagnostic scans (including cholangiopancreatography, electroencephalogram, angiogram, and bone scan), are not yet captured as part of this project.
In Q2 2022, there was a total of 238,605 patients reported on the waiting list from all sites, this represents all outpatients waiting, urgent, semi urgent, routine and planned/surveillance (where diagnostic access is planned at particular time intervals).
