Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent)
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149. To ask the Minister for Health his views on a recent report to an organisation (details supplied) from the National Treatment Purchase Fund which refers to the removal of 20,000 persons from hospital waiting lists following a validated audit of the lists. [43735/19]

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

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.

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.