Dáil Éireann Debate, Monday - 11 September 2023
1982. Deputy Niamh Smyth asked the Minister for Health the number of people waiting, as of 1 September 2023 or the nearest available date, for an electrocardiogram (ECG) in the RCSI Hospital Group for the following waiting periods, in tabular form: less than three months; three to six months; six to nine months; nine to 12 months; and more than 12 months. [39377/23]
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 diagnostic waiting list information requested by the Deputy, the National Treatment Purchase Fund has provided the attached document which sets out waiting list data for Quarter 2 2023 for CT, MRI and Ultrasound. The HSE advises that, at present, further diagnostic scans (including electrocardiogram, cholangiopancreatography, electroencephalogram, angiogram, and bone scan), are not yet captured as part of this project.
In Q2 2023, there were a total of 260,380 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).
The Deputy may wish to note that the information currently captured as part of the pilot project is available in the single report attached. To ensure that Deputies have access to these quarterly diagnostic reports as soon as they are available, my Department will put an arrangement in place whereby the reports can be provided to Deputies once they have been received from the NTPF, and will contact the Deputy directly in this regard.
