150,000 patients wait a year or more

MORE than 150,000 public patients were waiting more than 12 months to see a hospital doctor last year, latest figures revealed.

Figures released by the National Treatment Purchase Fund confirmed 152,940 people spent all of 2018 on a waiting list.

Stephen Donnelly, Fianna Fáil health spokesman, described the figure as being a ‘damning indictment of the current state of our health service’.

He said: ‘Almost 90,000 people have been waiting over 18 months for a consultation.

‘Such long waiting times are simply unacceptable and urgently need to be addressed.

‘The number of people waiting over a year for an appointment is now greater than the entire population of Wicklow.’

A total of 516,162 patients had to wait after a referral from their GP for outpatient treatment in a hospital.

Despite the high numbers of people waiting for treatment, there has been a slight reduction in waiting times over the past few years.

Simon Harris said he was ‘delighted’ to see improvements to the inpatient daycase waiting list, which reduced to almost 70,000.

The Health Minister said: ‘This was an ambitious target of the Inpatient Daycase Action Plan 2018 and which was achieved as a result of the immense efforts and the considerable collaboration of the HSE and the NTPF.

‘As a result... the number of patients waiting for an inpatient or daycase procedure has fallen to 70,204, from a peak of 86,100 in July 2017.

‘This represents a reduction of over 18% in the overall number of patients waiting for a procedure.’