Ms Bernadette Weir:

To take a patient who is waiting in Beaumont Hospital for a cataract operation as an example, we go out to tender and procure cataract services. We know there are long waiting lists for such services. We look at the all the long-waiting patients across all of the hospitals and the capacity available to us in the private sector. We identify the long-waiting hospitals – Beaumont Hospital in this example - and we take, say, the 50 longest-waiting cataract patients. We prepare a file. It is on our system. We tell the hospital that we have identified these 50 long-waiting patients and there is local capacity available for them in the private system. We ask the hospital to check whether these people are clinically suitable to go across, because some are and others are not. For those who are suitable, we ask the hospital to contact them and offer, for example, treatment in the local private hospital. As soon as they accept, our system is updated and we notify the private hospital to expect a file from Beaumont Hospital.

It will transfer that file and the private hospital phones the patient, arranges a suitable time for him or her to come in from a pre-op operation and, if he or she passes that treatment, for the surgery.