Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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25. To ask the Minister for Health if he will outline the waiting list activity of the NTPF to date in 2024; if it is on track to deliver its targets for the year; and if he envisages any extension of its remit in this sphere to meet other areas where waiting times can be a problem. [25751/24]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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The 2024 Waiting List Action Plan that I published in March this year set very ambitious activity targets for the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) . Within its budget of €179 million it is to arrange 163,500 episodes of care for patients on public hospital waiting lists;

• 110,000 outpatient appointments,
• 35,000 IPDC procedures
• 18,500 GI scopes.
• In addition, 117,692 patients who no longer require treatment are to be removed from waiting lists through administrative validation.
• Working with both public hospitals (insourcing) and private hospitals (outsourcing) to the end of April the NTPF is ahead of target in all four activity areas by;
• 30% for outpatients,
• 3% for IPDC,
• 15% for GI Scopes
• and 9 % for administrative validation.
• In relation to further developments, the NTPF together with the Health Service Executive and the Department has commenced a programme of work to develop full waiting list data collection and a waiting list management protocol for acute hospital radiology diagnostics. This is one element of a wider project to implement Best Practice Reporting of waiting time and waiting list reporting for patients on acute hospital outpatient, inpatient, day case and radiology diagnostic waiting lists.