Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

May I belatedly congratulate Deputy Aylward on his re-election? I served with him on the agriculture committee under a previous mandate and warmly welcome him back.

I am taking this issue on behalf of the Minister for Health and I thank the Deputy for raising it. Improving waiting times for scheduled care for patients is, of course, a key priority for the Government. Under Future Health, significant structural changes are envisaged for the acute hospital sector, with the formation of the hospital groups and the reorganisation of services to improve both quality and access. These structural changes are under way, but will take some time to fully implement. In the meantime, operating pressures remain on acute hospitals. In January, taking into account current pressures on acute hospital services, the Minister for Health put in place maximum permissible waiting times for inpatient-day case treatment and outpatient appointments of 18 months by 30 June and 15 months by year end. The HSE was provided with additional funding of €51 million to ensure that these maximum waiting times would be achieved. In June, the HSE reported a performance against the 18 month maxima of 99.6% for inpatient day cases, IP-DC, and 92% for outpatients, OPD. In order to maintain progress and to make further improvements to achieve a 15 month maxima by the end of December, the HSE has directed that hospitals which breach the 18 month maximum waiting time in August are to be fined.

The fines will be calculated on the basis of the activity-based funding cost of each procedure and are being imposed from 1 September. The HSE, in conjunction with hospital groups, is focused on delivering the improvements in waiting lists through maximising the use of internal capacity within and across hospital groups in the first instance. Hospitals have been requested to produce waiting list clearance plans in this regard. The HSE has already put in place specific measures to address waiting lists more efficiently in collaboration with acute hospitals, the special delivery unit and the National Treatment Purchase Fund. These include observation of the national waiting list protocol of 2014, adherence to relevant HSE national clinical programme guidelines and prioritising day-of-surgery admission where clinically appropriate. The latest published National Treatment Purchase Fund waiting list figures, from 27 August, indicate there were 306 patients waiting over 15 months for inpatient or day-case treatment in University Hospital Waterford. The hospital is working with all relevant parties as regards meeting the national targets. It has now developed and is implementing a plan to reduce the longest waiting times to 15 months by the end of December 2015. This will be achieved by the treatment of patients in routinely available hospital theatre sessions, the provision of additional weekend sessions and the possible outsourcing of the balance of patients.

The hospital is also in the process of reopening theatre sessions that were closed for cost-containment purposes previously. The Department of Health will continue to work with the HSE to ensure that all issues relating to hospital waiting lists are resolved.

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