385,000 patients waiting for outpatient treatment

Waiting lists for outpatients have soared to more than 385,000 people, HSE figures reveal.

Opposition parties warned the health service is heading into months of chaos as they expressed alarm at the figures.

Health Minister Leo Varadkar also came under fire for not grasping the scale of the problem after he pointed to some “small-scale improvements” in the HSE report.

The monthly performance survey shows that 385,781 people were on outpatient waiting lists at the end of December.

The report revealed people having to wait more than a year for an outpatient appointment surged from 55,733 to 61,400 in December.

The number of children waiting more than 20 weeks also rose in December from 2,234 to 2,282, according to the survey which showed a deficit of €549m for 2014.

The report states action on outpatient lists will have a knock-on impact on other areas of the health service.

“The rise in the requirement for emergency admissions has reduced scheduled care capacity which, has in turn, impacted on the total number of patients awaiting treatment. All of these factors contribute to the current trend in waiting lists,” the report states.

Fianna Fáil health spokesperson Billy Kelleher warned urgent action was needed to deal with the rising number of elderly people waiting for a place on the Fair Deal scheme.

“The Fair Deal delays, which we were told were easing, have begun increasing again. The number of older people waiting for a place on the scheme rose to 1,415 on the last week, up from 1,332 only two weeks previously.

“The average wait time is almost three months. Despite continued warnings over the past year about the need for additional resources for the Nursing Homes Support Scheme, the minister failed to provide adequate funding to relieve the situation, and as a result services right across the health system are being severely impacted.

“The overcrowding crisis, which was predicted before Christmas, and which reached record levels in January, is showing no signs of easing, with the latest figures from the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation revealing that there were 452 people on trolleys in Emergency Departments across the country this morning. This in turn is having a knock-on effect on other services, with hospital management being forced to cancel surgery for weeks, and in some cases months, on end.

“Patients attending our hospitals are being met with intolerable conditions. Frontline staff are going above and beyond the call of duty, working in unacceptable environments under immense pressure. Both the Taoiseach and the previous health minister James Reilly made promises to end the trolley crisis, but four years into the job, the situation is worse than ever before,” Mr Kelleher said.

Mr Varadkar said the report showed the scale of the “challenges” facing the health service.

“Waiting lists were generally longer throughout 2014 but towards the end of the year we began to see some improvements. There was a small reduction in the number of people waiting more than 13 weeks for a routine gastro-intestinal endoscopy in December.

“In 2014, we exceeded our targets for specialist palliative care provided within seven days of referral.”

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