Written answers

Tuesday, 29 May 2018

Department of Health

Hospital Waiting Lists

Photo of Éamon Ó CuívÉamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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443. To ask the Minister for Health when an operation will be scheduled for a person (details supplied); the reason for the delay in issuing a date for the procedure in view of the fact that it was expected to proceed in April 2018; if the procedure can be provided on the National Treatment Purchase Fund scheme or in another way; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [23687/18]

Photo of Simon HarrisSimon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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Under the Health Act 2004, the Health Service Executive (HSE) is required to manage and deliver, or arrange to be delivered on its behalf, health and personal social services. Section 6 of the HSE Governance Act 2013 bars the Minister for Health from directing the HSE to provide a treatment or a personal service to any individual or to confer eligibility on any individual.

The National Waiting List Management Policy, a standardised approach to managing scheduled care treatment for in-patient, day case and planned procedures, January 2014, has been developed to ensure that all administrative, managerial and clinical staff follow an agreed national minimum standard for the management and administration of waiting lists for scheduled care. This policy, which has been adopted by the HSE, sets out the processes that hospitals are to implement to manage waiting lists.

Under the Inpatient Daycase Action Plan 2018, which was published last month, the HSE will deliver 1.14 million hospital procedures. The NTPF will deliver 20,000 Inpatient Day Case treatments through both outsourcing and HSE insourcing. 

In terms of treatment offers, 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. NTPF authorisations are made in respect of the longest waiting patients first.

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

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