Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats)
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166. To ask the Minister for Health the steps he will take to reduce the waiting lists for eye procedures; and if he will implement reforms that would see community and hospital based services working more closely together to improve service delivery. [40099/17]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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Reducing waiting times for the longest waiting patients is one of this Government's key priorities. Consequently, Budget 2017 allocated €20 million to the National Treatment Purchase Fund (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. The Inpatient/Daycase Action Plan is being delivered through a combination of normal hospital activity, as well as insourcing and outsourcing initiatives utilising NTPF funding. Under the Inpatient/Daycase Plan, since early February, over 23,000 patients have come off the Inpatient/Daycase Waiting List.

The NTPF has advised that to date 4,250 patients have been authorised for treatment in private hospitals under its Day Case Initiative, 2,000 patients have accepted an offer of treatment in a private hospital and that 1,016 patients have received their procedure. Over 700 of these patients have had ophthalmology procedures.

The Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital is a national tertiary referral centre for complex eye diseases. A new cataract theatre in the hospital opened in July 2017. The new unit has the capacity to perform an additional 3,000 cataract procedures annually and has already significantly reduced public waiting lists for cataract surgery in the hospital.

The Report of the HSE-led Primary Care Eye Services Review Group was published in June 2017. The Review Group determined that there is a need to move from community ophthalmic physicians managing all primary care referrals to a model centred on a multi-disciplinary Primary Eye Care Team and also for the Primary Care Eye Team to liaise closely with the local hospital ophthalmic service to ensure that all patients are managed within the most appropriate clinical service and location.