Hospital waiting lists rose again last month to record levels, for the fifth straight month since Simon Harris became Minister for Health.
Almost 535,000 people were on public hospital waiting lists at the end of September, up more than 26,000 since last May, when Mr Harris was appointed Minister.
The numbers waiting a year and over for an appointment or treatment are also rising, despite the Government’s repeated promises to tackle long waiters.
A record 438,267 patients were waiting for an outpatient appointment at the end of last month, according to the latest monthly data from the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF).
This is over 3,000 up on the previous month.
More than 78,000 of these outpatients have been waiting for an appointment for over a year, up over 4,000 in just a month. Almost 47,000 have been waiting longer than the 15-month supposed “maximum” waiting time set by the Government.
The hospitals with the longest waiting lists include University Hospital Galway, at 33,000, the Mater and Beaumont hospitals in Dublin at 27,000, and Cork University Hospital, where 26,000 patients are on the list.
Slight increase
Meanwhile, 78,696 people are waiting for inpatient or day case procedures, a slight increase on the previous month. Worryingly, there was a 4,000 increase in the number of patients waiting for longer than a year, to 18,000. Almost 9,000 are on the list for more than the target maximum of 15 months.
The waiting times for gastrointestinal procedures, for which a separate list exists, continue to show a slight improvement. The GI endoscopy list fell over 200 to 18,000 last month as inroads were made into the backlog of cases.
The reasons for the rise in waiting lists over more than two years are disputed. The Government blames rising demand, with an additional 20,000 procedures carried out this year.
Earlier this year, overcrowding in emergency departments forced the cancellation of non-urgent appointments elsewhere in the health system and contributed to a rise in waiting lists, but this effect should have diminished since the end of the winter.
Next week’s budget is expected to spell out in more detail a number of initiatives designed to tackle the problem, to which the Government has already committed €51 million this year.
Fianna Fáil described the figures as “another month, another new high” for waiting lists. Health spokesman Billy Kelleher said the Government was missing its own targets as the upward trend since 2014 continued.
“A sustained effort is required to tackle this and the reactivation of the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) grows ever more urgent.”
A spokeswoman for the Minister said: “The numbers are far too high and the Minister is chairing a weekly meeting with department officials and the HSE to drive the implementation of waiting list initiatives he has already launched.
“There is evidence of progress in the numbers published today. In particular, the NTPF Endoscopy Initiative 2016 has seen 1,440 patients taken off the total list and the number of patients waiting over 12 months reduced by a third to 1,079.
“The Minister has also launched targeted initiatives on orthopaedics, spinal and scoliosis waiting lists which will see over 600 patients treated by the end of this year.
“A slow down in the rate of growth of the waiting lists is also apparent. While the numbers grew by 1,710 in June, the increase slowed to 197 in September, pointing to a stabilisation of the figures in the first couple of months of these initiatives.”
