Jim Higgins
Ceist:348 Mr. J. Higgins asked the Minister for Health the reason for the delay in the provision of an eye operation for a person (details supplied) in County Mayo.
Written Answers. - Out-Patient Waiting List.
The patient concerned is on the out-patient waiting list for assessment at University College Hospital, Galway. The Western Health Board has indicated that the patient will be called for assessment in approximately three months time. As the Deputy will appreciate, the scheduling of appointments and admissions to hospital is a matter for the consultant concerned and urgent cases are always accorded priority. However, should the patient feel that her condition has deteriorated she should return to her general practitioner who would be in the best position to stress the urgency of her case directly to the consultant.
The Deputy will be pleased to learn that the £20 million major action programme which I launched early this year is now well underway, and this initiative is being targeted at those areas of hospital treatment where long waiting times are causing the greatest hardship. As the Deputy may know, the Western Health Board was allocated £2,192,600 from the waiting list fund which was the largest allocation to any health board.
Part of this allocation is being used by the board to perform an additional 250 cataract operations this year, which should impact significantly on the average waiting times for patients awaiting such procedures.