10,000 patients waiting 4 years for a consultant

Nearly 60% of the 9,800 people waiting four years or more for an outpatient hospital consultant appointment are based in Limerick.

HSE figures show that despite Health Minister James Reilly’s aim to ensure nobody waits longer than 12 months by the end of this year, 9,784 people nationally are still waiting the lengthy period.

Details obtained by www.irishhealth.com confirm the highest rate in the country is at the Mid-Western Regional Orthopaedic Hospital in Croom, Co Limerick, where 4,109 mainly elderly people have been told they will not access care for at least four years. This figure accounts for 40% of the total four year-plus rate.

'10,000 patients waiting 4 years for a consultant' RT @irishexaminer Tomorrow's @irishexaminer front page pic.twitter.com/50krekLqsG

— Andrew Madden (@andrewmmadden) February 26, 2013

A further 1,716 patients are awaiting treatment at the Mid-Western Regional Hospital in Dooradoyle, making Limerick the location for about 59.5% of the entire national four-year-plus backlog.

Among the other facilities also facing significant waiting list setbacks is Waterford Regional Hospital. A total of 1,086 people have been told they will be unable to access outpatient consultant appointments until 2017 at the earliest at this hospital.

Despite Dr Reilly’s insistence that nobody will be on an outpatient hospital consultant waiting list for more than a year by the end of December, 9,784 people have been waiting more than four years for these appointments.

A further 8,989 have been told they must wait between three and four years if they want to be seen in a public hospital.

As previously reported by the Irish Examiner, 386,643 are on outpatient hospital consultant waiting lists.

This figure is the equivalent to one-in-12 people in the Republic.

Among the total waiting list figure delays are those for upwards of 2,000 people at risk of serious heart problems.

These would-be patients are forced to wait more than a year for initial consultant checks — including 74 people unable to access care for more than four years.

In its first full account of outpatient numbers in October, the Department of Health’s special delivery unit — set up by Dr Reilly to cut outpatient, inpatient, and trolley counts — found that more than 365,000 people were waiting for help.

The majority of waits are for a matter of months.

The SDU is setting up an electronic booking and referrals system to track patient cases in terms of access to care.

It is hoped this system will play a key role in flagging potential speciality or location-focussed waiting list problems early so that those in real need are not left without care for lengthy periods of time.