David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
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1817. To ask the Minister for Health the number of patients who were removed from and added to diagnostic waiting lists in 2021 and to date, by month and by hospital, and further broken down by whether the removal from the waiting list was as a result of a patient seen for an appointment or as a result of validating the waiting lists, in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [30465/22]

David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
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1820. To ask the Minister for Health the number of patients who were removed from diagnostic waiting lists as a result of validating the lists in 2021 and to date by year and by hospital in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [30468/22]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 1817 and 1820 together.

The HSE advises 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 Integrated Medical Imaging System (NIMIS) Team, Hospital Groups, and the support of the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) for data collection and data management expertise.

Under this pilot project, data for CT, MRI and Ultrasound are collated quarterly by the NTPF. The purpose of this aggregate data is to provide a National Level overview of the number of patients waiting for modalities of CT, MRI and Ultrasound.

The NTPF has advised that, as the collection of diagnostic waiting list data is still under development, diagnostic waiting lists are not yet part of the National Validation Unit’s validation programme, and the NTPF has further advised that it is unable to provide data in relation to the number of patients added to or removed from diagnostic waiting lists each month.