Every patient waiting for more than two years for operations could be treated if hospitals and consultants would release information about them, said the National Treatment Purchase Fund.
In a sharp letter to the Minister for Health and Children, Mr Martin, the head of the fund, Ms Maureen Lynott, said some hospitals are still refusing to pass on patients' details.
Over 2,000 people were waiting for more than two years last September for a variety of operations, including cardiac, orthopaedic, vascular and gynaecological.
In a bid to offer all of them appointments before the end of 2003, the National Treatment Purchase Fund tried to ascertain the names and addresses of the patients concerned, but failed.
The Government has allocated €30 million to the fund this year to buy treatment for patients on public hospital waiting lists in private Irish hospitals, or in hospitals abroad.
Some hospitals refused to release information on the grounds that this would breach the Data Protection Act - even though the Data Protection Commissioner, Mr Joe Meade, did not agree.
In an effort to overcome the problems, Mr Meade proposed that hospitals be compelled to provide the required information to the treatment fund.
The fund said it strongly believed this would "underpin patient entitlement and equity" and address "the current inconsistencies in relation to referrals".
"The upcoming establishment of the National Treatment Purchase Fund on a statutory basis presents an ideal opportunity to deal with these issues," said Ms Lynott.
"It is the experience that since the inception of the National Treatment Purchase Fund, while progressive co-operation has been received around the country, there are nevertheless ongoing situations in hospitals and specialities where patients are not referred for treatment in chronological order, or not being referred at all," she said.
"This is against a background of some under-utilisation of capacity. It would seem entirely reasonable and consistent with the aims of the health strategy and the remit of the NTPF, where a patient is waiting beyond a target time for treatment that their basic details should automatically be passed to the fund."
The automatic referral of names to the fund would help to create "a more accurate and up-to-date picture of long-waiters nationally", the Minister for Health was told.
Over 9,000 patients are waiting more than a year for treatment on hospital waiting lists, according to the figures published last year.
