Press release
Monthly waiting list figures - 14 April 2023
From Department of Health
Published on
Last updated on
From Department of Health
Published on
Last updated on
New hospital waiting list figures published today by the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) show that 490,993 people on the Active Waiting Lists (inpatient / day case, GI Scopes and outpatients) are waiting longer than the Sláintecare maximum wait times, which is a 5% (24,287) decrease in comparison to last month.
The 2017 Houses of the Oireachtas Sláintecare report recommended maximum wait times of no more than 12 weeks for an inpatient / day case (IPDC) procedure or GI Scope and 10 weeks for a new outpatient (OPD) appointment.
As at end of March 2023:
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 system alone.
For the most recently available 12 months of data, there were 3.4 million outpatient and 1.7 million in-patient / day case attendances. In addition to this planned (‘scheduled’) care, our hospital system also treated 1.6 million patients during this same period in emergency (‘unscheduled’) care, which represents a 10% increase on 2019 (pre-pandemic) levels and reflects the ongoing pressure on hospitals from flu surges and increased Emergency Department attendances.
Such pressures have had the expected knock-on impact on scheduled care in many of our hospitals in the first months of this year, which has resulted in some waiting lists temporarily increasing. However, there are many examples of individual hospitals delivering significant improvements in waiting times despite such challenges. For example, over the past year, Nenagh Hospital have reduced the number of patients waiting over 18 months for an OPD appointment by 79.7% in the last year, from 153 to 31, and Tallaght University Hospital have reduced the number of patients waiting over 12 months for an IPDC procedure by 38%, from 426 to 264.
The publication of March waiting list and activity figures by the NTPF and HSE follows the launch of the 2023 Waiting List Action Plan on 7 March by the Minister for Health. The 2023 Plan continues the multi-annual approach to addressing waiting lists that commenced in Q4 2021 and details 30 actions focused on delivering capacity, reforming scheduled care, and enabling scheduled care reform. The 2023 Plan will fund the HSE and NTPF to reduce waiting lists by a further 10% this year as well as continuing to significantly reduce waiting times towards the Sláintecare recommended targets.