Monthly waiting list figures - April 2024

New hospital waiting list figures published today by the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) demonstrates continued progress over the past year, resulting from the multi-annual action plan approach to addressing waiting lists and wait times.

Since the pandemic peaks, there has been a c.25% reduction in the number of people waiting longer than the Sláintecare targets, which equates to approximately 160,000 people. We now have 467,693 people on the Active Waiting Lists (inpatient/day case (IPDC), GI Scopes and outpatient (OPD)) waiting longer than the Sláintecare maximum wait times, while 231,979 patients are waiting within the Sláintecare targets.

As at the end of April 2024:

• 51,873 people are exceeding the 12-week the IPDC target which is the same as at the end of April 2023
• 9,234 people are exceeding the 12-week GI Scope target which is a c.14% decrease compared to the end of April 2023
• 406,586 people are exceeding the 10-week OPD target, which is a decrease of c.6% compared to the end of April 2023

In the last year the total waiting list has decreased by c.1% (6,836). As of the end of April, there were 699,672 patients on the total hospital waiting lists which is broadly in line with 2024 projections. It is normal for waiting lists to increase in the earlier part of the year as elective care is constrained due to high levels of unscheduled care demand. Despite the significant challenges from the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, emergency department pressures, and other operational factors such as recruitment, our hospitals have delivered improvements which are making a real difference to patients. Many individual hospitals have delivered impressive reductions in both their waiting lists and waiting times. The Health Service Executive (HSE) is currently working to replicate this positive performance across the entire hospital system.

The latest hospital activity report published monthly by the HSE is now available online. This gives regular insight into acute activity levels, with millions of patients being seen and treated annually within our hospital service. For the most recently available 12 months of data, covering February 2023 to January 2024, there were c.3.7 million outpatient and c.1.9 million IPDC attendances. In addition to this planned (‘scheduled’) care, our hospital system also treated c.1.7 million patients during this same period in emergency (‘unscheduled’) care, which represents a 3.2% increase on the previous 12-month cycle and reflects the continuing demands on our hospitals.

As part of the multiannual approach to reducing waiting lists and just as importantly the length of time that patients are waiting, on 27 March 2024, the Department of Health published the 2024 Waiting List Action Plan (WLAP) which sets out 19 Actions across three themes: Delivering Capacity, Reforming Scheduled Care and Enabling Schedule Care Reform.

Funding of €437 million has been allocated to address waiting lists in 2024. A total of €360 million of this funding has been provided for the 2024 WLAP, which includes €179 million for the NTPF. Funding of €77 million has also been allocated for primary care/community-based initiatives. This includes €3 million specifically to address waiting lists in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), which is a priority for the Minister for Health in 2024.

The 2024 WLAP aims to achieve an almost 6% reduction in the overall number of patients on waiting lists, an increase on the 2.7% reduction achieved last year. With the 2024 WLAP, the Department of Health, the HSE and the NTPF are taking the next steps in the multi-annual approach, including implementing Sláintecare targets through reducing the number of patients breaching the Sláintecare Wait Time Targets as of year-end 2023 by 10% and facilitating timely and transparent access to high-quality scheduled care, for everyone, where and when they need it.