Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats)
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157. To ask the Minister for Health further to the recently published NTPF audit and quality assurance reports on waiting lists, the reason Beaumont Hospital did not participate in this audit as planned; if the NTPF collected information in respect of the public or private status of the patients who were adversely affected; and if so, the data on same. [49542/17]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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The RTE Investigates programme in February highlighted the deeply moving personal stories of people waiting for treatment in public hospitals. Following the programme I was determined that the health service must learn from those patients’ experiences. As a result, I 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 I recently published the finding 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 terms of 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 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 I have asked the NTPF to develop a plan to extend the Special Audit process in 2018 to other public acute hospitals.

The HSE and Beaumont Hospital are currently engaging with a view to having this audit completed. The Audit Report of Beaumont Hospital will be published upon its completion by the NTPF.

The audit did not collect the information in respect of the public or private status of the patients that were adversely affected.