Monthly waiting list figures - January 2025

The latest hospital waiting list figures for January published today by the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) underline the progress achieved through the multi-annual action plan approach to addressing long wait times for care. The latest hospital activity report published by the Health Service Executive (HSE), demonstrates increased levels of hospital activity in the delivery of scheduled and unscheduled care services.

Today’s figures follow publication earlier this week of the Item was unpublished or removed by the Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill. The WLAP 2025 embodies the government’s commitment to reducing waiting times for patients, thereby, improving access to hospital care.

The delivery of elective care in the early months of the year can be impacted by the winter surge in demand for unscheduled care and because of high levels of respiratory illness circulating. Therefore, the increase in waiting list volumes seen in the January figures is as expected and an anticipated multi-annual trend.

Notwithstanding the time of the year we still see progress being achieved in the figures published today, including in terms of those patients waiting longest. We’ve also seen significant longer-term improvements in waiting times since the multi-annual WLAP approach was initiated in September 2021.

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 outpatients (OPD) and 12 weeks for inpatient and day case (IPDC).

Ireland’s acute hospitals are delivering higher levels of activity and treating many more patients than ever before. The latest hospital rolling 12-month activity report published by the HSE gives insight into acute activity levels, with millions of patients being seen and treated annually within our hospital service. The report outlines that there was c. 3.9 million OPD, and c. 1.9 million IPDC attendances during the period covered by the report. In comparison with the levels of activity delivered in the full year 2022, these figures represent increases of c. 14% for OPD and c.12% for IPDC activity.

In addition to this planned care, our hospitals also treated c. 1.8 million patients during this same period in emergency care, which represents a c. 10% increase on the full year 2022 and reflects the continuing demands on our hospitals.

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

The government is committed to further reduce waiting times, targeting all patients to be seen within the Sláintecare target of 10 weeks for OPD and 12 weeks for IPDC and Gastrointestinal (GI) Endoscopy (GI Scopes).

In keeping with this commitment, significant funding of €420 million has been allocated to the WLAP 2025, encompassing €190 million for the HSE and €230 million for the NTPF.

The WLAP 2025 was published on 12 February by the Minister for Health, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill TD. 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”.