Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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389. To ask the Minister for Health the number of persons awaiting a MRI in each hospital in the Saolta Hospital Group; the longest waiting time per person on each list; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [52875/19]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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The HSE advise that a pilot project commenced in 2016 by the HSE Acute Hospitals Division to progress the collection of national radiology waiting list data. The project has been supported by the Radiology Clinical Care Programme and has involved key stakeholders across the system including the National NIMIS Team, Hospital Groups, and the support of the National Treatment Purchase Fund for data collection and data management expertise.

The data requested by the Deputy is provided in the attached document.

The National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) advise that the waiting list data provided should be reviewed in light of the following caveats:

- Data contains urgent, routine and surveillance/planned activity which is currently not broken down in detail, as such surveillance/planned activity which may not be exceeding planned date;

- Data is still undergoing validation at Hospital and Hospital Group level;

- Data does not take into account local nuances at site level (Site profile developed to support understanding of same);

- The purpose of this aggregate data is to provide a National Level overview of the number of patients waiting for modalities of CT, MR and US;

- Local reports and mechanisms should continue to be used for the active management of diagnostics waiting lists at hospital level.