Minister Carroll MacNeill publishes the Waiting List Action Plan 2025

• focus on further reductions in waiting times for scheduled hospital care
• funding of €420 million has been allocated to the WLAP 2025

Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill has today (12 February) published the Waiting List Action Plan (WLAP) 2025, Government’s commitment to reducing waiting times for patients and improving access to hospital care.

Minister Carroll MacNeill stated:

Table 1: Weighted Average Waiting Time improvements under the WLAP approach

This year’s WLAP focuses on reducing waiting times for scheduled care and sets out four key targets aimed at achieving this objective, namely:

• having 50% of patients waiting less than the Sláintecare wait time targets (that is, 10 weeks for outpatients (OPD) and 12 weeks for inpatient and day case (IPDC)) by the end of 2025
• reducing the weighted average wait time for scheduled care to 5.5 months
• increasing the proportion of OPD patients waiting less than 12 months to 90% by the end of 2025
• reducing the proportion of patients waiting over 24 months, or at risk of waiting over 24 months by the end of 2025, by 90% this year

The WLAP 2025 takes account of the new Regional structures within the Health Service Executive (HSE) and the ongoing transition towards a more integrated model of care delivery, in that the national WLAP will be underpinned by specific Regional commitments in terms of activity, productivity and reforms. This new approach will afford each of the Regional Executive Officers flexibility in terms of the specific actions they prioritise, in order to support the achievement of the overarching national targets contained in the WLAP 2025.

In relation to the WLAP, Bernard Gloster, CEO of the HSE noted:

Significant progress has been made through the action plan to reduce waiting times in our acute hospitals. Since the commencement of the WLAP approach in September 2021, there has been an almost 64% reduction in the number of long waiters (that is, those patients waiting over 12 months) up to the end of December 2024. This equates to over 179,000 people.

The waiting time reductions achieved under the WLAP approach demonstrate sustained progress towards our ultimate goal of achieving the maximum waiting times set out in the 2017 Sláintecare report, for example, 10 weeks for OPD and 12 weeks for IPDC. Since September 2021, there has been a c. 25% reduction in the number of people on the waiting list who are waiting longer than the Sláintecare targets. This equates to approximately 148,800 less people breaching these targets.

As of December 2024, the percentage of patients waiting less than the Sláintecare wait time targets stood at approximately 35%. Through the successful implementation of WLAP 2025, the aim is to improve this proportion to 50% by the end of this year.

With the 2025 WLAP, the Department of Health, the HSE and the NTPF are aiming to progress towards the ultimate vision of a world-class public healthcare service in which everyone has timely and transparent access to high-quality scheduled care, where and when they need it.

The multi-annual WLAP approach was initiated in September 2021 to sustainably reduce and reform hospital waiting lists and waiting times.

Both the Department of Health and the HSE remain fully focused on reforming and reducing waiting times and improve access to hospital care, as reflected in the recently approved “Programme for Government 2025 – Securing Ireland’s Future” and in the HSE’s National Service Plan 2025.

The Department of Health worked closely with the HSE and the NTPF to develop the specific actions and targets set out in this year’s WLAP. WLAP 2025 sets out 25 actions under the themes of “Delivering Capacity”, “Enabling Scheduled Care Reform” and “Reforming Scheduled Care”, including:

• Delivering Capacity - sets out a number of initiatives to maximise scheduled care capacity, such as delivery of additional HSE OPD, IPDC and GI scope activity, HSE insourcing and outsourcing, enhanced endoscopy capacity, NTPF commissioning of treatments and validation, as well as activity to be delivered through the first two surgical hubs, which are expected to open this year in Dublin
• Reforming Scheduled Care - includes initiatives to support the reform of waiting lists to drive the most efficient use of available resources in a patient-centred way, such as: initiatives seeking to optimise the patient pathway from referral to discharge, e.g. through the use of enhanced productivity and efficiency measures for waiting list management; continued focus in addressing waiting lists for paediatric orthopaedics, overweight and obesity, and gynaecology; and to progress the work of High Volume Specialty Working Groups for Dermatology, Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology. Another key aspect of reform within the WLAP is to further progress the rollout of Modernised Care Pathways (MCPs)
• Enabling Scheduled Care Reform - encompasses a number of digital and enabling technologies and tools that will support and facilitate the longer-term reform of waiting lists. This includes a range of initiatives under the broader eHealth agenda, such as: enhancements to the integrated patient management system (IPMS) and rolling out electronic referral services; rolling out a new endoscopy reporting system; further implementation of Artificial Intelligence and automation processes to support the management of certain aspects of waiting lists; continuing to embed enhanced data visualisation platforms to improve productivity and performance oversight, including the Health Performance Visualisation Platform (HPVP); and implementation of the HSE Patient App

Last year, under the WLAP approach, there was a c. 12% reduction in the total number of patients waiting over 12 months since December 2023, and a corresponding reduction of c. 20% in the number waiting over 18 months. As a result of these improvements, as of the end of December 2024, approximately 85% of all patients who were waiting for care at the start of 2024 have been removed from the waiting list.

In terms of patients waiting longest, at the end of December 2024, the number of patients waiting or at risk of waiting over 3 years had decreased by over 73% (c. 25.0k) patients since January 2024.

Since the introduction of the first WLAP, we have also seen decreases in the average length of time that patients on hospital waiting lists have been waiting. For example:

• the weighted average waiting time for OPD reduced from 12.8 months in September 2021 to 6.8 months at the end of December 2024. This represents a decrease of approximately 47%
• over the same period, the weighted average waiting time for IPDC decreased from 9.1 months to 6.0 months – a c. 34% fall
• while for GI Scopes, the weighted average waiting time fell from 6.9 months to 2.7 months – a c. 61% decrease – during that period

The improvements in waiting times, delivered through the WLAP approach, have been achieved against the backdrop of increased demand for scheduled care services. Last year, there were 1.814 million people added to hospital waiting lists, which was just over 2% more than projected, which equates to approximately 39,500 people. However, the recent trend of year-on-year increases in health service activity and in the numbers of patients being treated continued last year. During 2024, 1.812 million people were removed from our acute hospital waiting lists, which was in line with the projections in the WLAP.