Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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605. To ask the Minister for Health the number of public patients removed from outpatient lists in to date in 2019 as a result of a validation exercise and not as a result of having an appointment with a consultant for each public and voluntary hospital in tabular form. [30999/19]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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Validation is the process whereby hospital administration contacts patients on waiting lists at pre-planned intervals during the year to ensure that patients are ready, willing, suitable and available to attend a hospital appointment or wish to be removed from the list. The validation of waiting lists can help provide clean, accurate, up to date waiting list data which reflects the true demand for hospital services.

For a number of years validation was conducted at individual hospital level in Ireland but this function was centralised by the Minister through the establishment of a National Centralised Validation Unit (NCVU) in the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) in September 2018.

Following engagement with public hospitals, the NCVU commenced issuing waiting list validation correspondence on the 2nd November 2018. The core aim of the Validation Unit is to write to all patients waiting more than 6 months for hospital operations and procedures and all patients waiting more than 9 months for an outpatient procedure. The Unit’s target is to validate 220,000 patients nationally on Inpatient, Day Case and Outpatient waiting lists.

The NTPF has advised that as of the 30thJune 2019, a total of 62 hospitals nationally had been validated by the NCVU, 28 for Inpatient, Day Case waiting lists, and 34 for Outpatient waiting lists. The outstanding hospitals have engaged with the NTPF and have been allocated a time slot for validation in the next 3-6 months.

In relation to the particular question raised by the Deputy, the NTPF advises that based on the Outpatient Validation exercise from 1st of January until the 5thof July, a total of 17,601 patients have been removed from the national Outpatient waiting list. The following table provides a breakdown of the validation figures by hospital.