David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
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516. To ask the Minister for Health the number of people on diagnostic scan waiting lists at the end of Quarter 3 2025. [67268/25]

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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Waiting times for radiology and diagnostic services have been recognised as an issue for some time. This Government is committed to the implementation of the 2017 Sláintecare Report, which includes a maximum waiting time target of 10 days for a diagnostic test.

This year the Productivity and Savings Taskforce published an action plan for 2025 which commits to a range of services being available 7 days a week, including diagnostics activity. It will also ensure that all publicly funded diagnostics are captured in the National Integrated Medical Imaging System (NIMIS) by the end of 2025, thereby improving care coordination and reducing duplication of tests and procedures.

The NTPF is working to support access to radiology and in October 2024 it published a National Radiology Diagnostic Waiting List Management Protocol. As well as ensuring that patients seeking access to Radiology Diagnostic services are administratively managed in a safe, timely, fair, and equitable manner whilst waiting, the protocol will facilitate improved data collection and reporting about patients on Radiology Diagnostic waiting lists.

In the interim, the information that is currently being collected as part of a pilot project is being tested and validated at hospital, hospital region 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 Regions.
• 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 Region 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.