Monthly waiting list figures - March 2025

The latest hospital waiting list figures for March 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.

Notwithstanding that we continue to see the impact of winter pressures in the figures published today, they still show progress, including in terms of those patients waiting longest. There has been a c. 7% reduction in the total number of patients waiting over 12 months since this time last year, and a corresponding reduction of c. 15% in the number waiting over 18 months.

We’ve seen significant longer-term improvements in waiting times since the multi-annual WLAP approach was initiated in September 2021. The Minister for Health, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill published the Waiting List Action Plan (WLAP) 2025 in February. The WLAP 2025 embodies the government’s commitment to reducing waiting times for patients, thereby, improving access to hospital care.

The figures indicate that at the end of March 2025, there were 707,439 patients on the active hospital scheduled care waiting list. The delivery of elective care in the early months of the year is impacted by the winter surge in demand for unscheduled care and because of elevated levels of respiratory illness circulating. However, whilst the increase in waiting list volumes to date is as expected and an anticipated multi-annual trend, it would be expected that this trend will stabilise from April onwards and the growth in OPD will be mitigated.

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 full year 2024. In comparison with the levels of activity delivered in 2023, these figures represent increases of c. 9% for OPD and c.5% 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. 9% increase on the full year 2023 and reflects the continuing demands on our hospitals. Increased emergency department attendances and demand in unscheduled care can result in some cancellations of elective procedures, and the impact this will have on patients is recognised.

There were c. 469k patients added to, and c. 435k patients removed from our acute hospital waiting lists in the year to date. While the Health Service does not wish to see a growth in numbers waiting for care, growth in the number of referrals to our hospital services has a positive aspect as it is indicative of people accessing the services that they need, an increased awareness of services and reflects an expansion of services.

For 2025, further investment has been secured to continue the multi-annual approach to reduce and reform acute hospital waiting lists. With the 2025 WLAP, the Department of Health, the HSE and the NTPF are taking the next steps in evolving the multi-annual approach towards achieving this government’s vision of a public healthcare service where everyone has timely and transparent access to high-quality scheduled care services, where and when they require them.

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 (Outpatient department) and 12 weeks for IPDC (Inpatient / Day Case) 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. 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”.