John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail)
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2475. To ask the Minister for Health the number of public patients that have been removed from outpatient lists in 2021 as a result of a validation exercise and not as a result of having an appointment with a consultant for each public and voluntary hospital in tabular form. [37908/21]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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Periodic validation forms an essential part of best practice in relation to the management of hospital waiting lists.

Validation is a process whereby hospital administration contacts patients on waiting lists at pre-planned intervals to ensure that patients are ready, willing, suitable and available to attend a hospital appointment or if they wish to be removed.

For a number of years validation was conducted at individual hospital level in Ireland but in 2018, the Minister for Health approved the establishment of the National Centralised Validation Unit (NCVU) within the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF). The establishment of a centralised function has facilitated the introduction of a standardised approach to validation of waiting lists across all hospitals and across Inpatient Day Case and Outpatient waiting lists.

The NCVU has advised that the validation programme was impacted due to the ongoing IT issues triggered by the recent HSE cyber- attack. The NCVU is working closely with all hospitals to resume and/or continue with the validation process as systems are restored across the acute hospital sites.

In relation to the data requested by the Deputy, the NCVU provided the attached document which outlines outpatient validation removal figures by hospital from 1st January to 9 July 2021.