Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail)
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126. To ask the Minister for Health the action he will take to address the long outpatient waiting times in Cork city hospitals in which 8,601 persons are waiting more than 18 months for an appointment. [43571/18]

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 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.

Outpatient waiting list figures for the end of September for hospitals in Cork City (Mercy University Hospital; Cork University Hospital; Cork University Maternity Hospital; South Infirmary Victoria University Hospital) show that combined between them there were more than 53,000 patients waiting for a first appointment. Of these over 71% of patients are waiting 12 months or less.

More broadly, South-South West Hospital Group has engaged in a number of initiatives to address long waiting lists throughout the wider hospital group. For example South-South West advises that South Infirmary has engaged with the NTPF to provide additional sessions within the specialties of dermatology and ENT. It has also recruited an additional audiologist in July to reduce waiting times. NTPF-funded weekend clinics in ophthalmology have also commenced at Cork University Hospital with a target of seeing an additional 200 patients, while plastic surgery patients will also be treated through an innovative 'see and treat' clinic commencing on 20th October 2018.

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.