Fiona O'Loughlin (Kildare South, Fianna Fail)
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463. To ask the Minister for Health the targets in place for reducing outpatient waiting times in Naas General Hospital in 2019; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [43765/18]

Fiona O'Loughlin (Kildare South, Fianna Fail)
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464. To ask the Minister for Health the outpatient waiting times in Naas General Hospital; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [43766/18]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 463 and 464 together.

In Budget 2019 the Government has prioritised improving access and reducing waiting times for patients, with funding to the National Treatment Purchase fund (NTPF) increasing from €55 million in 2018 to €75 million in 2019, of which, €6 million will be committed to outpatient activity.

To date in 2018, the NTPF has approved almost 12,700 additional first-time outpatient appointments and this is projected to increase to 40,000 appointments next year. I recently met with the CEOs of all hospital groups to discuss improving access for patients and requested that they work with the NTPF and HSE in 2019 develop innovative proposals to address the number of long waiters on outpatient lists in 2019.

In addition, the Central Waiting List Validation function, which was established in the NTPF last month, will deliver a standardised approach to validation across all hospitals in line with best patient-centred practices. This new function will have many benefits including the identification of patients on waiting lists who are ready and available to proceed with hospital care, the reduction in the Did Not Attend rate (DNA), and an improvement in information for managing waiting lists. The NTPF estimates that 30,000 patients who no longer require treatment will come off the outpatient waiting list in 2019 as a result of this activity.

The data on Outpatient waiting times in Naas General Hospital, sought by the Deputy is outlined below:

There are currently 8,131 patients on Outpatient waiting list in Naas General Hospital, and of these 55% are waiting 9 months or less.  1,042 patients on the Outpatient list have received an appointment date.

Specialties in Naas General Hospital, with high numbers of patients waiting include, Dermatology (1,576 ), General Medicine (1,894), Cardiology (1,284) and Orthopaedics (2,122).

Outpatient Waiting times in Naas General Hospital