Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour)

There is a backlog of 4,478 orthopaedic outpatients on the waiting list at Cork University Hospital who have been waiting two years or longer. The patient longest on the list has been on it for three and a half years. Each week an average of 100 new patients are referred to the hospital. The average waiting time for what is described as a "routine" patient is 24 months. A routine patient is likely to be an elderly person who will suffer "routine" pain every single day of the two years he or she is waiting to be examined. During this time, pain management often has to be administered by the local general practitioner while the person awaits that initial appointment with the consultant. As a result, the quality of life for this person is greatly diminished while he or she is waiting for the procedure.

For administration purposes, pain may be described as "routine" but it is far from routine when examined in real human terms. Only this week on TV3, we saw an example of a woman on this waiting list, who, rather than go through the daily grind of dealing with the pain, went to her local credit union, borrowed €5,000 and got on an aeroplane to Poland to have her procedure carried out. To take another example, a 72 year old patient came to me last year who was also classed as a "routine" patient. He was advised that an urgent MRI scan was needed but that it could not be carried out until a hip examination had been completed. This makes no sense. Furthermore, patients classified as urgent wait an average of 18 months for an appointment at CUH. It is hard to conceive how a patient classed as "urgent" by a consultant can be expected to go on a waiting list for so long.

The national outpatient department, OPD, project has been established to improve the delivery of OPD services and I commend the medical staff who are making every effort to reduce the backlog. Nonetheless, waiting times are increasing. Comparisons must be made with the private sector where it is commonplace for a patient to be treated for hip replacement in about eight to ten weeks. That suggests there is a major organisational difficulty at the heart of the problem and this was seen to be the case for a great number of years before the creation of the national treatment purchase fund, NTPF. In CUH we saw that patients were seen within three or four months. They may have been waiting two years for a procedure but were seen within that short period. Since the NTPF was put in place those patients must now wait for two years before they can get a first appointment. If they are not treated by that time they are then seen within the NTPF. There is something very worrying going on in Cork University Hospital and this has been the case for several years at an administration level. This must be sorted out. Cork University Hospital has made improvements in processing other areas of outpatient treatment. The same skills must be employed to improve orthopaedic services in the Cork region.

I share the Minister's objective of renewing the health service as set out in the programme for Government but 4,478 mainly elderly patients must not be expected to suffer in silence during this period of renewal. I ask him to make these patients his priority.

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