Written answers

Wednesday, 15 February 2012

Department of Health

Hospital Waiting Lists

9:00 pm

Photo of John McGuinnessJohn McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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Question 11: To ask the Minister for Health the reason the Health Service Executive no longer collects data on waiting times for outpatient waiting lists; his plans to change the criteria; the way the new criteria will work and to differentiate between the previous and new criteria being used; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [8380/12]

Photo of James ReillyJames Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)
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The Special Delivery Unit was established in my Department last July to tackle patient wait times for hospital services. Unacceptably high wait times have been tolerated for too long and have become systemic for both unscheduled and scheduled care. The problems have to be tackled step by step so that improvements can be sustained.

The SDU immediately began work with the HSE and the NTPF on the problem of trolley waits and long waits for inpatient care. Last July I introduced a 12 month limit beyond which no hospital could keep a patient waiting for inpatient or day case treatment.

There is no room for complacency but progress is being made. Since December the number of patients waiting on trolleys has been consistently lower than the same period last year and 94% of hospitals met the 12 month target for scheduled care. As a result some patients have had a better quality of service than would otherwise have been the case.

I believe I have also demonstrated through this initiative that, even in the challenging times we face, it is possible to exert control over the system and deliver improvements. This has been achieved by the SDU, the NTPF and the HSE working together to rigorously manage performance.

Up to now the number of patients waiting for OPD appointment has not been consistently and reliably quantified by all hospitals. The data have simply not been sufficiently accurate to be meaningful at a national level. The SDU has now begun to work with the HSE building a new approach to compiling and validating outpatient lists

The priority for the first quarter of 2012 is for hospitals to support an SDU/NTPF project to establish weekly monitoring of outpatient waiting list numbers. The first task is to collate, analyse and validate the number of outpatient referrals in the system. This work has been well advanced by the HSE during 2011. Once it has been finalised and considered it will enable the SDU to make recommendations to me in respect of an outpatient wait time target in 2012. In principle I will be adopting the same criteria of strict chronological management of the waiting list which is now in place for in-patient treatment.

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