John Perry (Sligo-Leitrim, Fine Gael)
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Question 100: To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Health and Children if the waiting times for procedures under the national treatment purchase fund is three months; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [28938/05]

Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)
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The national treatment purchase fund has reported that, in most instances, anyone waiting more than three months for a routine surgical procedure will be facilitated by the fund. A patient may contact the fund directly or through his or her general practitioner, hospital or consultant to have his or her treatment arranged. The fund has pointed out, however, that in certain cases, for reasons of clinical or patient complexity, it may not be possible for the fund to arrange treatment immediately.

Up to the end of September over 35,000 patients have had treatment arranged for them by the national treatment purchase fund. The fund has made significant progress in reducing waiting times for patients.

I launched the NTPF new patient treatment register, PTR, in early September. The PTR is a new national database of patients waiting for admission to hospital for treatment. The register will allow for more accurate identification of waiting lists and, more importantly, waiting times. The first phase of the register was implemented in September 2005. Phase 1 of the project includes data from seven hospitals which, under the previous waiting list system, accounted for approximately 40% of the total number of patients waiting nationally. The published data for the seven hospitals showed that patients are waiting between two to four months for their operation for 17 out of the 20 most common surgical procedures.

Gerard Murphy (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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Question 101: To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Health and Children the way in which 83% of hip replacements were done in a public hospital under the national treatment purchase fund, which was established to carry out procedures that could not be carried out in the public sector to be carried out in the private sector; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [28934/05]

Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)
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The national treatment purchase fund, NTPF, was established as one of the key actions for dealing with public hospital waiting lists arising from the 2001 health strategy. The strategy envisaged that the NTPF might make use of any capacity within public hospitals to arrange treatment for public patients. It was recognised that during the start-up phase of the fund, the use of public capacity could account for 30% of total NTPF activity, once public core service planned activity was not compromised. The Department has recently advised NTPF that use by the fund of public facilities should be limited to 10% of its total referrals for treatment.

The majority of elective orthopaedic surgery, including hip replacements, takes place in public elective orthopaedic facilities which do not provide accident and emergency services. As elective activity in these hospitals does not take place 24 hours per day and seven days a week, using theatres and beds outside of normal working hours is one way of creating extra elective capacity in the public system. Allowing public hospitals to undertake work under the NTPF initiative also incentivises hospitals to perform extra work and to treat more patients over and above core funded activity. This activity is carried out often by staff working overtime, who come in at weekends or who extend theatre time on occasions.

Other situations that compelled the use of public or "in-house" capacity were cases where, for reasons of clinical or patient complexity, it was clearly best practice to have certain patients treated by their own consultant in the hospital where they were on the waiting list. Not to have used this facility would have effectively barred this cohort of patients from accessing the NTPF scheme.