MORE THAN 1,130 women with breast cancer symptoms who required urgent assessment at one of the State’s eight specialist cancer centres had to wait more than two weeks for appointments during the first seven months of this year, new figures show.
In addition, over 2,380 women requiring routine or non-urgent assessment had to wait more than three months to be assessed.
This is in breach of standards set by the Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) which state urgent referrals should be seen within two weeks and routine referrals within 12 weeks.
The new figures were presented to a meeting of the Health Service Executive (HSE) board late last week and have been posted on the HSE website. They show, however, the situation in respect of non-urgent referrals has been improving since January. At that time, 74.6 per cent of non-urgent referrals were offered an appointment within 12 weeks whereas by the end of July some 83.8 per cent of routine referrals were offered an appointment in the same timeframe. In the case of urgent referrals, whereas 84.5 per cent were offered appointments within two weeks in January, by July this was back at 80.6 per cent. This means 187 “urgent” cases overall were not seen within the desired two-week timeframe in July.
The waiting times vary across the hospitals. The worst-performing centre in July was the Mater hospital where the figures show just 25 per cent of patients were offered urgent appointments within two weeks. But the National Cancer Control Programme (NCCP) stressed this was because the centre was undergoing refurbishment. It has since run extra clinics to reduce waiting times and the hospital is now exceeding the target of 95 per cent of urgent referrals seen within two weeks, an NCCP spokeswoman said.
The HSE also discloses 519 beds were closed in hospitals between January and July to cut costs, and an additional 899 beds remain unavailable due to delayed discharges.