Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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119. To ask the Minister for Health the action that will be taken to address the long outpatient waiting times in Galway University Hospital in which 5,772 persons are waiting more than 18 months for an appointment. [43579/18]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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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 CEO’s 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.

Outpatient waiting list figures for the end of September for Galway University Hospital show that there were more than 39,000 patients waiting for a first appointment. Of these over 85% of patients are waiting 18 months or less.

More broadly, Saolta Hospital Group has engaged in a number of initiatives to address long waiting lists throughout the wider hospital group. Saolta advises that at Galway University Hospital it is currently engaging in innovative outpatient initiatives, including the use of virtual clinics to address outpatient waiting lists within the specialties of ENT and vascular services.

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 estimate that 30,000 patients who no longer require treatment will come off the outpatient waiting list in 2019 as a result of this activity.