COMMUNITY HEALTH services in Dublin West and Wicklow have been rated as the worst in the country by the HSE’s own performance management ratings system.
Under the system local health office areas are assessed on a range of criteria including waiting times for speech and language therapy, child developmental checks, vaccination rates, and social work services.
In Dublin West where over 1,000 children were waiting to be assessed by speech and language therapists in June, 38 per cent had been waiting more than a year for the assessment.
And 18 per cent of children were waiting more than a year for treatment following assessment.
Meanwhile, in Wicklow in June just 4 per cent of babies received their seven-to-nine month child development health screening checks before reaching the age of 10 months.
In Dublin West the situation was worse with no child being screened within that timeframe.
There were huge variations in performance across the regions with 100 per cent of infants in West Cork having undergone these developmental checks before they reached 10 months.
Overall services in Sligo/Leitrim and Waterford were rated best in the country.
In these areas no child was waiting more than four months to be assessed by speech and language therapists.
Immunisation uptake rates at 12 months in Dublin West and Wicklow hovered around 83 per cent and 86 per cent respectively compared to 90 per cent in Sligo/Leitrim.
Also in Dublin West just 30 per cent of children in care who were due to have a scheduled review of their care plan in June had that review, compared with 91 per cent in Sligo/Leitrim and 92 per cent in Waterford.
Wicklow was the community care area which also had the highest percentage of staff hours lost due to absenteeism in June.
There, more than 6 per cent of staff hours were lost due to absenteeism in June compared with just 2 per cent in Mayo and Roscommon and 3.9 per cent in Sligo/Leitrim.
Unions representing health sector staff have been claiming for months that the embargo on recruitment in the public sector has led to developmental checks on children as well as other work being delayed.
Latest data from the HSE’s HealthStat system, which also rates the performance of hospitals, found Dublin’s Tallaght Hospital to be the worst performing hospital in the State in June.
The average waiting time for a routine appointment with an orthopaedic specialist in the hospital’s outpatient department was 18 months.
The best performing hospitals in June were named as St James’s and St Vincent’s, both in Dublin along with Cavan General Hospital.