John Brassil (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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257. To ask the Minister for Health the way in which a person (details supplied) can avail of the National Treatment Purchase Fund for an ophthalmology procedure; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [18771/18]

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 in 2018, €50 million was allocated to the NTPF to provide treatment for patients. The recently launched Inpatient/Day Case Action Plan outlines the combined impact of HSE and NTPF activity in 2018 to reduce the number of patients waiting for treatment to below 70,000 in 2018.

The action plan places a particular focus on cataract surgery and commits to offering treatment to all cataract patients who are clinically suitable for outsourcing and who have been waiting more than nine months for treatment.

In respect of the work of the NTPF, the NTPF authorises public hospitals to offer outsourced treatment to clinically suitable long waiting patients who are on an inpatient/day case waiting list for surgery, having been referred on to such a list following clinical assessment by a consultant/specialist at an outpatient clinic. The NTPF advise that they cannot discuss details of individual patients. NTPF authorisations are made in respect of the longest waiting patients first. In respect of Ophthalmology, the NTPF are currently authorising patients who will be nine months waiting by June 2018.

In all cases, the appropriate care pathway of an individual patient remains a decision for their treating clinician.

In relation to the particular matter raised by the Deputy, as this is a service matter, I have asked the HSE to respond to the Deputy directly.