Noel Rock (Dublin North West, Fine Gael)
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368. To ask the Minister for Health his views on hospitals working outside the preferred methods of validating their waiting lists as outlined in the national waiting list management protocol, such as issuing letters to patients less than three months on the waiting list and giving them less than four weeks to reply; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [43340/19]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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Good practice around the management of hospital waiting lists recommends periodic validation. 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.

In this context, the National Inpatient/Daycase Planned Procedure Waiting List Management Protocol sets out the national protocols for the management of waiting lists including validation and clinical suspensions.

The purpose of Validation is to:

- Maintain hospital-patient communication during the patient’s waiting list journey;

- Update the patient record;

- Reduce the rate of patient non-attendance and/or patient cancellations; and

- Provide clean, accurate, up to date waiting list data which reflects the true demand for hospital services.

Administrative validation is the process whereby hospital administration contacts patients on inpatient and day case 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. When a patient is removed from a waiting list due to non-response to a written validation cycle, notification must be sent to the referring clinician and the patient. Importantly, the validation process allows for situations where, if requested by the GP/referring clinician, patients can be reinstated back to their original place on to the Waiting List.

For a number of years validation was conducted at individual hospital level in Ireland but last year, I approved the establishment of the National Centralised Validation Unit (NCVU) within the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF). The new office delivers a standardisation of approach to validation across all waiting lists in line with the best patient-centred practices. The validation of waiting lists better informs the true demand for hospital services and enables improved efficiency and patient scheduling.

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 6 months for an outpatient appointment.

The NCVU advise that as of 27th September 2019, they had completed 124 validation cycles, across 35 hospitals, resulting in 193,092 patients being contacted and 33,720 patients being removed from the Inpatient/Day Case and Outpatient waiting lists.

A report on patients' reasons for requesting a removal from the Inpatient Waiting lists during administrative validation is being finalised by the Department of Health Research Unit and will be published on the Department’s website in November.