Jim O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay South, Fianna Fail)
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842. To ask the Minister for Health the number of public patients who have been removed from outpatient lists in 2023 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. [24852/23]

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 preplanned 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 validation function 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.

In relation to the data requested by the Deputy, the NTPF provided the attached document which outlines outpatient validation removal figures by hospital from 1st January 2023 to 28 April 2023.

The NTPF has advised that patients who fail to respond to Outpatient Commissioning Offer letters are now formally validated by the validation team and removals relating to this cohort of patients are included in the attached report.

A recent technical error with the scanning database resulted in the validation numbers being overstated; this issue is being rectified by the NTPF and the HSE and the issue will be resolved by the end of June.