Barry Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

84. To ask the Minister for Health the way that the Waiting List Action Plan will reduce waiting times for both in-patient and day case procedures and outpatient consultations at the Midland Regional Hospital, Tullamore; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [26638/22]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

The 2022 Waiting List Action Plan allocates €350 million to the HSE and NTPF to provide additional activity to further stabilise and reduce scheduled care waiting lists and times and bring forward much needed longer-term reform. We estimate that over 1.5 million patients will be added to active waiting lists this year. This Plan details how we intend to ensure that an even higher number, 1.7 million, are treated and removed from waiting lists.

Much of our waiting list funding will be directed to public hospitals, where additional elective activity will take place. However, we will also make greater use of the private sector, so we can help patients to get faster access to care.

While the Plan provides overall direction and actions to be implemented across all acute scheduled care waiting lists this year, it does not specify plans per hospital. However, the HSE have been working closely with all hospital groups to finalise care improvement plans which will support funding prioritisation to help reduce waiting list backlogs and identify and build sustainable capacity within the Irish Health Service.

We will also progress work towards the achievement of intermediate waiting time targets, as set out in the HSE National Service Plan (of 18 months for OPD; 12 months for IPDC; and 12 months for GI scopes). We had 75,000 patients on active inpatient and day case waiting lists at the end of 2021 and aim to have treated almost all those patients by the end of 2022.