Waiting list patients losing out on care prospects

HOSPITAL consultants have been accused of deliberately failing to tell patients stuck on waiting lists that they are entitled to free treatment elsewhere.

A Government scheme to cut hospital waiting lists, by paying for private treatment for public patients at home and abroad, has had such a low take-up in some health boards that it has to be re-launched.

Department of Health officials have privately blamed the poor response on doctors who are not referring patients.

The officials claim it is in the doctors’ interest to maintain high waiting lists.

The director of the National Treatment Purchase Fund, Maureen Lynott, said they were getting good cooperation in many areas.

But she confirmed some consultants refuse to refer patients to Britain.

This assertion has been firmly rejected by the Irish Hospital Consultants’ Association, which said it was not the doctors’ job to inform patients of their entitlement to the scheme.

“The only reason they’re re-launching this scheme is because their information programme has failed. Rather than accepting the blame, they are trying to claim that responsibility for it lies elsewhere,” said IHCA secretary general Finbarr Fitzpatrick.

Claims that long waiting lists benefited consultants were originally raised in 1989 by the Commission on Health Funding.

It said some doctors did not fulfil their responsibilities to public patients because of the opportunities to make more money from private practice.

Mr Fitzpatrick rejected this but said consultants had reservations about the treatment purchase fund itself.

He said it was a stop-gap measure which did not represent value for money, and insisted it would be wiser to increase hospital capacity in the long run.

“It is a short-term substitute because public hospitals don’t have the capacity to take routine work presented to it.”

Just 29 patients in the Midwestern Health Board (MWHB) have had procedures carried out under the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF), less than 3% of the 1,037 nationwide total.