Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats)
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300. To ask the Minister for Health the number of persons on a waiting list for elective surgery in each hospital in County Cork; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [4949/21]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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It is recognised that waiting times for scheduled appointments and procedures have been impacted in the last year as a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The HSE is currently recommending that only critical time dependent elective procedures are undertaken at this time due to the on-going and significant increased demand for bed capacity related to Covid-19.

This decision was made arising from the rapid increase in Covid-19 admissions and to ensure patient safety and that all appropriate resources were made available for Covid-19 related activity and time-critical essential work.

Patient safety remains at the centre of all hospital activity and elective care scheduling. To ensure services are provided in a safe, clinically-aligned and prioritised way, hospitals are following HSE clinical guidelines and protocols.

The National Waiting List Management Policy is a standardised approach used by the HSE to manage scheduled care treatment for in-patient, day case and planned procedures. It sets out the processes that hospitals are to implement to manage waiting lists and was developed in 2014 to ensure that all administrative, managerial and clinical staff follow an agreed national minimum standard for the management and administration of waiting lists for scheduled care.

The data requested by the Deputy is outlined in the attached document, listing the IPDC waiting list in each Hospital in Cork. The National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) publish the Inpatient and Day Case (IPDC) on the NTPF website monthly,

IPDC Waiting List, Cork Hospitals as of 23/12/2020

*Due to the small volume of patients waiting, to preserve patient confidentiality, when the number of patients is <5, these have been included within broader timebands and aggregated into a 'Small Volume Group' cohort.

Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats)
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301. To ask the Minister for Health the number of children under 18 years of age waiting on a hospital-based health waiting list by the speciality procedure they are on the list for; the length of time they have been on same by hospital at the end of December 2020 or the latest date available; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [4950/21]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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It is recognised that waiting times for scheduled appointments and procedures have been impacted in the last year as a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The HSE is currently recommending that only critical time dependent elective procedures are undertaken at this time due to the on-going and significant increased demand for bed capacity related to Covid-19.

This decision was made arising from the rapid increase in Covid-19 admissions and to ensure patient safety and that all appropriate resources were made available for Covid-19 related activity and time-critical essential work.

Patient safety remains at the centre of all hospital activity and elective care scheduling. To ensure services are provided in a safe, clinically-aligned and prioritised way, hospitals are following HSE clinical guidelines and protocols.

The National Waiting List Management Policy is a standardised approach used by the HSE to manage scheduled care treatment for in-patient, day case and planned procedures. It sets out the processes that hospitals are to implement to manage waiting lists and was developed in 2014 to ensure that all administrative, managerial and clinical staff follow an agreed national minimum standard for the management and administration of waiting lists for scheduled care.

The data requested by the Deputy has been provided to my Department by the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) and is outlined in the attached documents. These tables provide a breakdown of the Inpatient, Day Case and Outpatient waiting lists for children under 18, the Hospital, the Specialty and the numbers waiting in each time-band as of the end of December 2020.

Furthermore, the NTPF currently publishes the Adult and Child Analysis for the Inpatient and Day Case waiting lists on the NTPF website monthly and has advised that they are currently working on the separation of adult and child waiting lists and plan to be in a position to publish these reports in later in 2021.