MORE THAN 1,500 patients across the State had been waiting over 12 months for surgery at the end of last year, according to a new report.
The latest annual report from the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) points out that while this is a reduction on the numbers who were waiting at the end of 2007 it is “unacceptable” that patients are still waiting for more than a year for treatment at a small number of hospitals.
NTPF chief executive Pat O’Byrne named three hospitals in particular as having the longest delays: Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, Dublin; Temple Street Children’s Hospital in Dublin; and Limerick Regional Hospital. These hospitals accounted for 42 per cent of the patients waiting for more than 12 months for treatment, he said.
Meanwhile, he pointed out that when the NTPF was set up in 2002 to arrange private care for public patients waiting more than three months for treatment, patients were waiting two to five years for operations. But now the median waiting time for treatment, once patients are seen by a hospital consultant, is just 2.6 months. However, some patients may wait for years to see a consultant in outpatients in the first place, after being referred by their GP.
Outpatient waiting lists, for example, which are now being tackled by the NTPF, were reduced from three years to one year in dermatology at St James’s Hospital, Dublin, in the past year, while orthopaedic outpatient appointments in the southeast were reduced from five years to three years.
Mr O’Byrne said more than 50 per cent of those patients waiting over a year for surgery were day cases which could be treated through the NTPF. But he pointed out that research among the longest waiters carried out recently indicated that 75 per cent of them had been offered treatment but did not respond or did not attend their scheduled appointments and 9 per cent declined the offer of faster NTPF treatment.
So, he said, one would have to question why some of these were on surgical waiting lists.
Some 60 per cent of those waiting over 12 months for surgery at Crumlin and 86 per cent of those waiting over a year for surgery at Temple Street were day cases, he added. More than half those waiting over 12 months for day case surgery at Temple Street were awaiting circumcision.
Overall, the report shows that 7,280 patients were waiting three to six months for treatment at the end of 2008, some 5,007 were waiting six to 12 months and 1,576 were waiting a year or more.
The NTPF’s budget was €100 million in 2008 and it has been cut by €10 million this year. But it still hopes to treat about 30,000 patients, though it acknowledges waiting times may lengthen by a number of weeks.
Minister for Health Mary Harney, launching the report, insisted the NTPF gave value for money. “I don’t believe there is any hospital in the country that would have treated 36,000 patients last year for the budget that we give to the NTPF,” she said.
Meanwhile, a 35-year-old Dublin man in danger of losing his sight due to diabetic eye disease has waited 16 months for an appointment at the Mater hospital. Chris Murphy has had his eye clinic appointments cancelled twice and now has an appointment for September.