Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 1 June 2023
57. Deputy Gino Kenny asked the Minister for Health if he is aware that an organisation (details supplied) recently reported that over 1.1 million people are waiting for some form of hospital care, with 888,600 people on National Treatment Purchase Fund waiting list and a further 250,000 people waiting for diagnostics; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [26576/23]
Amharc ar fhreagraIt is recognised that waiting times for many scheduled appointments and procedures were too long before and have been made worse by the Covid-19 pandemic. The Department of Health continues to work with the HSE and the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) to identify ways to improve access to care. On the 7th March, I published the 2023 Waiting List Action Plan, which is the next stage of a new multi-annual approach to sustainably reduce and reform hospital waiting lists, and builds on the foundational work done through the short-term Waiting List Action Plan between September and December 2021, which was followed by the first full year Waiting List Action Plan for 2022, both having reversed the annual trend of rising waiting lists.
For 2023, funding totalling €443 million is being allocated to tackle Waiting Lists with €363 million of this being allocated to the 2023 Waiting List Action Plan, to implement longer term reforms and provide additional public and private activity to clear backlogs exacerbated during the pandemic. This will reduce hospital waiting lists by 10% in 2023 as well as continuing to significantly reduce waiting times in line with Sláintecare recommendations. The remaining €80 million of the €443 million is being targeted at various measures to alleviate community/primary care waiting lists.
With this ambitious 2023 Waiting List Action Plan, my Department, the HSE and the NTPF are taking the next steps in the multi-annual approach towards achieving our vision of a world-class public healthcare system in which everyone has timely and transparent access to high-quality scheduled care, where and when they need it, in line with Sláintecare reforms.
The report reference by the Deputy is based on the National Treatment Purchase Fund's April 2023 waiting list figures for acute public hospitals published on 12th May and a diagnostic waiting list report of Q1 2023. The waiting list figure of 888,600 quoted is a consolidated high-level figure that includes just over 706,000 patients who are waiting for an appointment for their procedure or their first outpatient consultation. It also includes 96,827 patients under surveillance or receiving a course of treatments who have received their first treatment but will require further treatment; 29,691 patients who have received an appointment for their procedure within the next six weeks; 55,566 patients who are receiving treatment through an outsourcing or insourcing arrangement and patients who temporarily cannot proceed with their care for clinical, personal or social reasons.
In relation to diagnostics waiting lists a pilot project commenced in 2016 by the HSE Acute Hospitals Division to progress the collection of national radiology waiting list data. In Q1 2023, there were a total of 250,021 patients reported on the waiting list for CT, MRI and Ultrasound 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 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.
