Catherine Byrne (Dublin South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will be taking this matter on behalf of the Minister for Health, Deputy Harris. The "RTÉ Investigates" programme in February highlighted the deeply moving personal stories of people waiting for treatment in public hospitals. Following the programme the Minister was determined that the health service must learn from those patients' experiences. Patients deserve timely, effective and safe treatment from a compassionate and caring health service.

For these reasons, the Minister asked the NTPF to examine waiting list practices in the hospitals highlighted in the programme. The NTPF has now reported to me on its findings and last week the Minister published the findings of the special audit. The NTPF's report has a number of actions to be implemented by the individual hospitals and across the public hospital system as a whole, to drive better performance in how waiting lists are managed in our hospitals. Arising from the audit, the HSE has taken immediate steps to put in place a plan at national level that will focus on driving system-wide implementation of performance and process improvement in waiting list management.

As part of this plan, the HSE will assess, review and oversee implementation of performance and process improvement to address the special audit findings across all hospitals. Addressing the special audit report's recommendations will also be a priority for the HSE for the remainder of the year and will form a core pillar of the waiting list action plans for 2018 as well as the HSE's national service plan. In addition, the Minister has asked the NTPF to develop a plan to extend the special audit process in 2018 to other public acute hospitals.

The Government's commitment to addressing waiting times is clear. Funding of €20 million was allocated to the NTPF in 2017 for waiting list measures and for three months in a row we have seen reductions in the total numbers of patients on the inpatient-day case waiting lists. To continue this strong focus on waiting lists, €55 million will be allocated to the NTPF in 2018 for waiting list measures and a further €10 million will be made available to the HSE for waiting lists, including scoliosis and paediatric orthopaedics.

Addressing waiting lists is, however, not only a question of funding. Since the "Living on a List" programme, several initiatives have been under way to reform and improve how our health service manages hospital waiting lists. These initiatives seek to drive sustainable, multifaceted and innovative approaches in waiting list management. These include a range of initiatives including a study ongoing by the NTPF working with Trinity College to examine international best practice in how waiting list information is collected and reported, and progressing towards more integrated approaches in waiting list management at hospital group level as part of the feasibility study recently carried on by the NTPF. In addition, the HSE is undertaking a national waiting list validation project run by the HSE, to improve the quality of our waiting lists and get an up to date picture of how many patients are actually waiting for care so that the hospitals can plan better and manage waiting lists more efficiently. Initiatives are also ongoing to develop capability in our hospital system in waiting list management best practice and to utilise technology to best effect to support more responsive, effective and efficient waiting list management. The Minister is committed to the idea that the health service learns from the NTPF special audit and the experiences of the patients concerned in order to improve services for all patients.

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