Waiting times for public patients are shortest ever

AVERAGE treatment waiting times for public patients have fallen to their shortest level ever at less than three months.

The National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF), which arranges treatment for public patients in private hospitals, pointed out that waiting times were between two and five years when it was established in 2002.

The latest annual report from the NTPF shows the fall in the national average waiting time resulted from faster treatment arranged for 36,269 patients in 2008, up 11% on 2007.

NTPF chief executive Pat O’Byrne said the national average time of 2.6 months was from the time a consultant put a patient onto the waiting list for treatment.

However, the NTPF is angry there are still public hospitals with long waiting times for patients and said it was not good enough.

A total of 1,186 patients are waiting over a year for surgery and, while the numbers have been cut in the past year, the NTPF said the situation is unacceptable and has urged the hospitals responsible to work with it to reduce these unnecessarily high waiting times..

Mr O’Byrne said over 40% of the current longest waiters were on lists in three hospitals: The Children’s University Hospital, Temple Street (18%), Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital for Sick Children, Crumlin (12%) and Midwestern Regional Hospital, Dooradoyle, Limerick (12%).

He said the number of long waiters had been reduced by 65%, compared with December 2007 and a further 35% reduction had been achieved since the start of the year. Huge progress had been made reducing long waiters in a number of hospitals, particularly Letterkenny and Sligo.

He said that 11% of patients waiting three months or longer were children and children also accounted for 30% of those waiting more than 12 months.

He said most of the patients on waiting lists in the paediatric hospitals in Dublin were day cases and could be dealt with by the NTPF by referring them to private hospitals, as they did with 90% of other cases.

He also pointed out that 75% of the 1,100 patients still waiting more than 12 months for surgery had already been offered treatment by the fund or their hospital and have either not responded or not shown up for an appointment.

And 9% declined the offer of faster NTPF treatment, while 11.5% have been unsuitable for clinical reasons to avail of treatment provided by the fund.

Latest figures from the Patient Treatment Register show a 17% decrease in patients waiting for an operation, compared with this time last year.

A total of 13,193 adults and children are waiting more than three months for surgery across 44 hospitals. Of these, 7,080 are waiting three to six months and 4,927 are waiting six to 12 months.

The NTPF’s budget for this year, at €90 million, is €10 million less than 2008, nevertheless, it is aiming to treat around 30,000 patients. It expects waiting times may lengthen by a number of weeks because of the funding cut.

Mr O’Byrne said they would continue to ensure the best possible prices are achieved with their negotiations with all private hospitals, to ensure the maximum number of longest waiting patients possible received their treatment.

Health Minister Mary Harney, launching the report, said the NTPF delivered “fantastic value for money” and the fund organised treatment for more than 150,000 patients since it was established in 2002.