Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 30 November 2016

Select Committee on the Future of Healthcare

Health Service Reform: HSE

9:00 am

Mr. Liam Woods:

I would suggest we are already facing a very significant challenge. Whether we could call it a crisis or not, our capacity to do scheduled care does not match the rate at which we take on people seeking scheduled care. That is a big problem. Some of the things we have already discussed potentially address that in refocusing towards primary care. At the moment, however, we have seen up to a 15% increase in referral from primary care to some specialties since January. We have seen a 5% increase in referrals from community to emergency departments in the current year. To some extent it would be speculating as to what the future rates would be, but certainly we are seeing those kinds of trends. We had 1.3 million attendances at accident and emergency departments per annum, which are up 5%. GPs see about 25 million-----

Comments

No comments

Log in or join to post a public comment.