I fully acknowledge the distress and inconvenience for patients and their families when elective procedures are cancelled.
Maintaining scheduled care access for all patients is a key priority for hospitals, and balancing this with emergency demand at times is challenging. However, all efforts are made by hospitals to limit cancellations particularly for clinically urgent procedures.
Cancellation of elective procedures can occur for a variety of exceptional reasons including cancellations because a bed or the clinical team are not available, cancellations by the patient or because the patient may not be fit for surgery at the time.
Based on data provided by the NTPF, collated from reports by hospitals, approximately 3,400 elective procedures, on average, are cancelled per month. However, this must be seen in context. In 2016, typically in a month, there were approximately 53,000 admissions to acute hospitals on a daycase and an inpatient basis.
It is essential that hospitals continue to improve how they manage, and balance, the demand for emergency care with the planning of elective procedures, to minimise the impact on patients. In addition, the HSE continues to improve its processes to minimise the number sessions lost when patients cancel or do not attend for their procedures.
The Department of Health has commenced a Health Service Capacity review in line with the Programme for Government commitment, the findings of which are due to be published before the end of the year.
In response to the particular query raised, as this is a service matter, I have asked the HSE to respond to the Deputy directly.
