Marcella Corcoran Kennedy (Offaly, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising this important issue and I welcome the opportunity to provide information to the House on the matter. In light of increasing demand, a key challenge for our health system is to ensure patients have timely access to health services. The Government is committed to a sustained focus on improving waiting times, particularly for those waiting longest. The number of patients who are waiting to be seen or treated must be considered in the context of the total numbers of patients seen and treated. Every year, there are 3.2 million outpatient attendances at our hospitals. Some 94,000 patients have an elective inpatient procedure and 1 million have a planned day case procedure.

There has been a 4% increase in inpatient and day case activity and more than a 1% increase in elective activity. The HSE has advised that outpatient lists have been increasing since the beginning of the year due to a typical weekly growth of approximately 1,400 patients per week. The HSE has explained that this growth is in part due to a 14% increase in referrals to acute outpatient services. The HSE outpatient services performance improvement programme is working on targeted programmes with a number of specialties to put sustainable solutions in place to address general access times, which will, in turn, address long waiters. These specialties are orthopaedics, urology, general surgery, and ear nose and throat, ENT. Pathways of care that will extend access options for patients are being developed in those specialties as well as in dermatology, rheumatology and ophthalmology. While gynaecology is not yet included in the improvement programme, the programme will be extended to all specialties in the future.

My colleague, the Minister for Health, Deputy Harris and I are aware that there is a difficulty with waiting times for gynaecology services in CUMH. However, the hospital is undertaking a number of initiatives to address outpatient waiting times. I very much welcome these initiatives, as will Deputy Sherlock. They include the provision of additional evening outpatient review clinics which are led by a member of the consultant gynaecology team. The service has recently appointed a gynaecology sonographer who will lead an ultrasound service in liaison with the consultant gynaecology team. With the scheduled additional consultant-led evening sessions, it is anticipated that the gynaecology ultrasound waiting list will be cleared by December 2016.

A national women and infants health programme is being established to lead the management, organisation and delivery of maternity, gynaecological and neonatal services by bringing together work that is currently undertaken across a number of HSE divisions. Spanning primary, community and secondary care, the programme will create the essential cross-sectoral framework to provide the necessary governance, integration and leadership to drive reform and standardise care across maternity, neonatology and gynaecology services. Noting that the international trend in gynaecology service provision is moving towards more day case services and the provision of community one-stop-shop type facilities, it is intended that the programme will be instrumental in driving much-needed reform of gynaecology services. This will include the potential to adopt a multidisciplinary approach and move some service delivery to community settings. Work to establish the programme is ongoing.

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