People waiting on hospital treatments up 11% since last year

There are currently more than 862,000 people on some form of hospital treatment waiting list, an increase of 11 per cent since January 2020.

A record 20,813 patients are waiting over a year for hospital inpatient/day case care, an increase of 11,103 in the last year, according to the latest figures from the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF).

There were 622,963 patients waiting for a first hospital outpatient consultation at the end of January.

The Irish Hospital Consultants’ Association (IHCA) has said the number of patients waiting over 15 months for inpatient/day case treatment has increased from 56 patients in January 2014 to 14,334 in January 2021.

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The IHCA has urged the Government to put in place “the capacity and resources over the coming months to catch up on the essential hospital care that is being postponed or delayed due to the pandemic”.

ICHA President Professor Alan Irvine said the waiting time figures drive home the "devastating impact" of Covid-19 on the provision of care to patients as well as "the persistent underinvestment in hospital infrastructure, bed capacity and other facilities in the past decade and the failure to address the consultant recruitment and retention crisis".

Backlogs

“Regrettably, in the short-term due to the ongoing Covid-19 crisis these waiting lists will deteriorate further. The impact of the current surge and the unavoidable delays in providing hospital care will be particularly felt in the second half of the year, but also for years to come unless plans are put in place now to clear the backlogs,” Prof Irvine said.

“Planning is now required to ensure that services are resourced appropriately to cater for the increased demand. But with over 700 permanent consultant posts vacant our acute hospitals are very poorly positioned to provide timely care to patients.”

Prof Irvine said while the Government has committed to record funding levels for health in 2021 “until this money is channelled effectively and speedily to where it will make the most difference for patients”, public hospitals will continue to have record waiting lists and struggle to address the backlog of treatment due to Covid-19.

“Nearly 70 per cent of members who responded to a recent IHCA survey confirmed that the low number of consultants available to deliver care will have a moderate or severe adverse impact on their capacity to deal with the backlog in non-Covid care,” he added.

“Government can no longer ignore the fundamental requirement that essential treatment is delivered by consultants and that no amount of investment in hospital services will reduce waiting lists unless we recruit and retain the necessary number of hospital consultants to deliver timely care.”