Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity)
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880. To ask the Minister for Health the estimated annual cost of maximum waiting times of 12 weeks for inpatient procedures, ten weeks for outpatient appointments and ten days for diagnostic tests as recommended in the Committee on the Future of Healthcare’s Report. [34565/17]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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The Committee on the Future of Healthcare Slaintecare report, the recent publication of which I welcome, has recommended a universal single-tier public health system. The report is the culmination of a year-long process of unprecedented cross-party collaboration, dialogue and engagement and is testament of the desire across the political spectrum and across the broader stakeholder community to work collaboratively to address the challenges in the health service. It is vital that we now that we reflect on the wide-ranging and far-reaching findings and recommendations of the Committee. To that end, I am currently developing a response to the report, which I hope to bring to Government quickly.

I acknowledge that waiting times are often unacceptably long and I am conscious of the burden that this places on patients and their families.

Reducing waiting times for the longest waiting patients is one of this Government's key priorities. Consequently, Budget 2017 allocated €20 million to the NTPF, rising to €55 million in 2018.

In order to reduce the numbers of long-waiting patients, I asked the HSE to develop Waiting List Action Plans for 2017 in the areas of Inpatient/Daycase, Scoliosis and Outpatient Services. These plans have been published and their implementation is ongoing. The Inpatient / Daycase and Outpatient Plans focus on reducing the number of patients waiting 15 months or more for inpatient and daycase treatment or for an outpatient appointment by the end of October. The Scoliosis Action Plan aims to ensure that no patient who requires scoliosis surgery will be waiting more than four months for surgery by the end of 2017. Under these Plans, since early February, over 15,800 patients have come off the Inpatient/Daycase Waiting List and nearly 57,000 patients have come off the Outpatient Waiting List.

In addition, the NTPF is currently rolling out its Daycase Waiting List Initiative focused on those waiting longest for daycase treatment, with a view to ensuring that in excess of 2,000 patients waiting more than 18 months for a daycase procedure will have received an offer of an appointment for their procedure by the end of June.The NTPF has advised that to date nearly 3000 patients files have been transferred to private hospitals under this Initiative, close to 900 patients have accepted an offer of treatment in a private hospital and around 400 patients have received their procedure.