Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats)
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2526.To ask the Minister for Health the number of persons on a diagnostic waiting list, by type, wait time and location, in tabular form. [33451/24]

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 was 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.