Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail)
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952. To ask the Minister for Health if he will report on the allocation of €55 million in 2018 to fund the National Treatment Purchase Fund to address waiting lists; the amount of this funding that has been spent; the number of patients who have been treated under the auspices of the fund to date in 2018; and the total number who have been treated since the fund’s restoration in 2016. [16307/18]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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Improving waiting times for hospital procedures is a key commitment in the Programme for Government and as part of this €55 million was allocated to the NTPF in 2018.

The recently launched Inpatient Day Case Action Plan 2018 commits the NTPF to deliver 20,000 Inpatient Day Case treatments and 4,000 Gastro Intestinal Scopes.

For the first quarter of this year 5,278 people were removed from the Active IPDC waiting list as a result of accepting offers of treatment funded through the NTPF and 547 patients were removed from the GI Scopes waiting list.

In 2017 a total of 8,192 people were removed from the Active IPDC waiting list as a result of accepting offers of treatment funded through the NTPF. As a result of the NTPF Scopes Initiative, 1,328 patients were removed from the GI Scopes waiting list. The total estimated cost of treatment for those who accepted offers in 2017 is €20.5m.

The NTPF did not have a direct role in the commissioning of patient treatments in 2016. The procurement of treatments was carried out by the HSE and the role of the NTPF was administration of the payments to the hospitals.