Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour)
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2503.To ask the Minister for Health the average waiting time for diagnostic tests; his plans to meet Sláintecare objectives; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [33320/24]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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The NTPF (National Treatment Purchase Fund) with the Department and HSE, are currently engaged in a project to introduce Best Practice Reporting (BPR) of waiting times and waiting lists. The project includes Radiology Diagnostic Waiting lists within its scope and will facilitate improved reporting of information about those lists.

With regard to the information currently available about radiology diagnostic waiting lists, 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 NTPF for data collection and data management expertise.

The information that is currently being collected is presently being tested and validated at hospital, hospital group and national level and as such should not be used/reported without the context of the caveats set out below:

• Data is subject to inclusions and exclusions which are documented in the Data Profile Document. This document is available from Acute Operations and has been circulated to all Hospital Groups.
• Data contains urgent, routine and surveillance/planned activity which is currently not broken down in detail, as such this includes surveillance/planned activity which may not be exceeding planned date.
• Data is still undergoing validation at Hospital and Hospital Group level. Data does not take into account local nuances at site level (Site profile developed to support understanding of same).
• 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.
• This report is not intended to be used for the active management of hospital diagnostics waiting list, local reports and mechanisms should continue to be used for the management of diagnostics waiting lists at hospital level.

The most recent report is available at the link below. This report is for Quarter 2 2024.

At the end of Quarter 2 2024, there was a total of 281,877 patients reported on the waiting list from all sites, this represents all outpatients waiting, urgent, semi urgent, routine and planned/surveillance (where diagnostic access is planned at particular time intervals).

It is acknowledged that many patients are still waiting too long for hospital appointments and treatments, including appointments for radiology diagnostics.

As part of the multi-annual approach to reducing waiting lists, and just as importantly the length of time that patients are waiting, I published the 2024 Waiting List Action Plan on 27th March. Total funding of €360 million has been provided for the plan this year which sets out 19 Actions across three themes: Delivering Capacity, Reforming Scheduled Care and Enabling Scheduled Care Reform.

The Waiting List Action Plan multi-annual approach, initiated in 2021, encompasses a two-pronged approach of short-term actions to increase capacity and activity in the immediate term, and longer-term reform measures to sustainably reduce and reform hospital waiting lists and waiting times.

The 2024 Plan builds on the work of previous plans which have achieved significant progress in overall waiting list reduction and in addressing long waiting times, against a backdrop of significantly increased demand for scheduled care services. This year’s plan aims to achieve a reduction in the overall number of patients on waiting lists while three of the four overarching targets in the Plan are specifically focused on improving waiting times.