NI hospital hoping to double the amount of cataract patients from the Republic next year

A private hospital in Belfast is planning to more than double the number of cataract operations it carries out for people in the Republic of Ireland.

Kingsbridge Hospital CEO Mark Regan says his consultants do about 100 eye operations a month for new patients under the Cross Border Directive (CBD) on Health Scheme.

However, he expects capacity to increase early next year, taking the numbers to 200-a-month.

Mr Regan is due to meet HSE officials in early January to talk about offering “a more standardised service”.

He has been taking customers who can’t wait to be treated on the HSE - and opt to choose the CBD scheme instead - since 2015, but they have increased over the past two years since the first Cataracts Express bus trip in December 2017.

That service, which undertook its 50th trip to Belfast on Saturday, was launched by independent TDs Danny Healy-Rae and Michael Collins.

They have arranged around two trips-a-month to Belfast ever since.

Mr Regan said: “To date, with this bus alone coming up from Cork, we have seen have seen about 1,500 patients.

“That equates to 20-a-week

We could certainly double that capacity with the right discussions with the HSE in Dublin and we hope to start doing that next year.

Deputy Collins said that when he and Deputy Healy-Rae started out in December 2017, they had about 50 more people waiting to go up.

That figure has since doubled.

“It is a shocking indictment on this government that two years on, not only is this service still badly needed, but more people are using it than before,” Deputy Collins said.

“We don’t discriminate against anybody who isn’t in our respective constituencies and will help whoever asks us for help.

“There are still very many people who simply cannot wait to get their eyes done on the HSE and have no choice but to take out credit union loans and get their eyes done this way.”

Anyone who uses the CBD scheme pays up front for their treatment.

When the Cataracts Bus started, waiting times to get your money back took between four and six weeks.

It can now take up to three months.