Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)
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523. To ask the Minister for Health the amount of the €200 million allocated to the HSE for waiting lists has been spent to date in 2022; the amount spent in private and public hospitals; and if he will provide a breakdown of the spend in each hospital. [47005/22]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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The 2022 Waiting List Action Plan was launched with €350m of funding on 25 February this year following extensive engagement between my Department, the HSE and the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF). 

The Action Plan contains 45 actions to reduce and reform waiting lists across four main areas of work: delivering capacity, reforming scheduled care, enabling scheduled care reform, and addressing community care access and waiting lists. One of these actions is to develop and agree a multi-annual waiting list reduction plan to support the achievement of the Government maximum wait time targets.

Implementation of the Action Plan is being governed by a Waiting List Task Force, co-chaired by the Secretary General of the Department of Health and CEO of the HSE, who are meeting regularly.

As of the end of August, the HSE reported that it has spent €58.7 million of the €200 million allocated under the 2022 Waiting List Action Plan. This includes €29.1 million spent on additional inpatient / day case (IP/DC) procedures, €6.2 million on additional outpatient appointments (OPD), €7.5 million on additional gastrointestinal endoscopy (GI) scopes, and €400,000 on diagnostics. 

In addition, €10.8m has been spent on additional activity to reduce community waiting lists (including orthodontics, primary care child psychology, counselling in primary care, child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS)), €800,000 on Faecal Immunochemical Test (FIT) teams, €2.7 million on the Scheduled Care transformation team, €900,000 on administration staff for validation in hospitals, and €300,000 has been spent on reform support (mainly ICT related).

A detailed breakdown of the amount spent in private and public hospitals has been requested from the HSE and will be provided once received.