Outpatient waiting lists
Deputy Mary Butler raises very long outpatient waiting times at University Hospital Waterford and says consultant vacancy figures are a serious concern. The Taoiseach says vacancy numbers are uncertain, notes progress on operations and procedures, but concedes that outpatient progress remains poor.
Primary access to outpatient care is a key component of the programme for Government. Recently released figures from the National Treatment Purchase Fund are worrying and disappointing, especially for outpatient waiting lists in excess of 18 months. I will cite two examples. The ear, nose and throat, ENT, waiting list at University Hospital Waterford, UHW, in excess of 18 months stands at 3,437 and for orthopaedics it stands at 1,655. I accept that currently there are 479 vacant consultant posts in Ireland across all sectors in health, a situation which is compounding the issue. What are the specific plans within the Department of Health to tackle long waiters, especially in excess of 18 months?
Comment on this
I am not sure there are 479 vacant posts. The Deputy will be aware the when the Public Service Pay Commission examined these issues, it was not able to authenticate claims made either by the unions or the HSE as to how many consultant posts there are, but that is a problem in itself when we do not how many vacancies there are really.
Comment on this
We will talk about that another time. To answer the Deputy Butler's question, from the patient point of view, which is what really matters, we have made considerable progress in reducing waiting times for operations and procedures. We lost some ground as a consequence of the nurses' strike, but the number of people waiting more than 12 weeks for an operation or procedure has been falling for well over a year. At the end of last year, it was at a four or five-year low. We lost a little time because of the nurses' strike, but we will catch up on that. We are not making progress on outpatients. We need to see if the approach we used to reduce waiting times for operations and procedures might be applied to some outpatient specialties such as ENT, dermatology and ophthalmology where we could buy in expertise from the private sector if we need to do so.