David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
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968. To ask the Minister for Health the mean and median waiting times in number of months across each waiting list for each speciality for each hospital group and by hospital; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [10107/21]

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 National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) has provided the information requested by the Deputy outlined in the attached document. The NTPF has advised that these figures are a snapshot in time and represent the mean and median of the numbers of days that people on the list at the given date have been waiting.

The NTPF further advised that their wait times are measured in days. In order to provide the Deputy with the information in the requested format (month), they have included a calculated column on the attached extract to convert days to months by dividing the amount of days by 30.4375 (365.25 divided by 12) and rounding the number down.