Patients face ‘postcode lottery’ on outpatient waiting lists, consultants claim

Patients waiting to be assessed for treatment in public hospitals are facing a “postcode lottery” with variations in outpatient lists across the country, hospital consultants have claimed.

People reliant on public hospital services in Waterford, Limerick, Galway and parts of Cork and Dublin are now said to be facing the longest waiting times.

The Irish Hospital Consultants Association (Ihca) analysis comes as new data on Friday showed the number of people awaiting first-time outpatient appointments in public hospitals rose last month, ending a three-month decline.

Figures for January, published by the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF), show the waiting list had reached 625,513 by the end of January, a rise of just in excess of 8,000 since the beginning of the year.

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While the numbers on the list have risen and fallen marginally over the course of the past year, the number waiting at the end of last month was 2,550 more than at the same time last year.

‘Shocking figures’

The Ihca noted that more than 893,000 people are on some form of NTPF waiting list – about one in eight people in the country – including almost 98,000 children, marking an overall increase of 30,000 in the past year.

"These shocking figures should be a wake-up call to Government to urgently address the twin deficits of a shortage of consultants and a lack of sufficient public hospital capacity to resolve the record waiting lists we continue to experience," said Ihca president Prof Alan Irvine.

Its analysis of geographical differences in outpatient waiting times, based on population, found some hospitals in the south and west with waiting lists 20-times greater than others.

The six constituencies with the largest hospital waiting lists as identified by the IHCA are Cork South Central (with 70,862 on the outpatient list); Limerick City (47,555); Dublin Central (44,956); Galway West (56,916); Waterford (43,002); and Dublin Bay South (41,655).

However, they claim that “limited” NTPF data means a “clear and accurate picture” of patient waiting times is almost impossible to derive.

“These figures should be a wake-up call to Government to urgently address the twin deficits of a shortage of Consultants and a lack of sufficient public hospital capacity to resolve the record waiting lists we continue to experience,” Prof Irvine said.

The outpatient waiting list for those waiting for first-time appointment in public hospitals had been declining slowly since the end of last September when the figure reached 653,524, and had decreased by 5.5 per cent to 617,448 at the end of the year.

Monthly updates

The NTPF, a corporate body working alongside the Department of Health, the HSE and acute public hospitals, releases monthly updates on various waiting lists.

Responding to criticisms, the HSE noted that various Covid-19 surges and the cyber attack in May set back care activity in hospitals. Regarding the latest NTPF data, it said this showed an 11 per cent reduction in the number of patients awaiting inpatient/day-case procedures and that while outpatient numbers were up slightly over 12 months, they had fallen for those waiting for longer than a year.

A spokeswoman said the HSE’s Waiting List Action Plan will focus on waiting list management, capacity and preparation for the introduction of maximum wait time targets.

“The HSE is working with Hospital Groups to ensure that available additional funding is targeted at access to care for patients where care delivery has been affected by the Pandemic with a view to containing the trend that has been seen in quarter four of 2021 in terms of reducing waiting lists,” she said.