Almost 500,000 fail to show for hospital appointments

The Health Service Executive is looking at providing group appointments for patients as a way of cutting lengthening waiting lists, according to Minister for Health Leo Varadkar.

Almost half a million people failed to attend for a scheduled hospital appointment last year, Mr Varadkar revealed today.

Mr Vardakar told the Dáil 13 per cent of appointments resulted in a “did not attend” (DNA) last July.

However, this was still an improvement from 15 per cent in January.

He was responding to questions from the Opposition about big increases in waiting lists since the start of the year, as high as 1,000 per cent in some categories.

At the end of last year, 2 per cent of patients were waiting for an outpatient appointment longer than the targeted maximum time of 12 months. Mr Varadkar said waiting times were cut through a year-long intervention with special funding from September to December to help outsource patients suitable for assessment.

However, wait times have grown since the start of the year and currently 11 per cent of the patients on the waiting list are waiting for more than one year for access to outpatients.

Mr Varadkar said outpatient referrals were up 13 per cent in the first half of this year, and an extra 43,225 patients were on the outpatient lists compared to the same period in 2013. He said an additional 196,434 patients had been seen this year.