The Government is to spend an additional £11.87 million on reducing hospital waiting lists by more than 7,600 this year. Some £22.7 million has already been allocated for 14,421 procedures, bringing the total expenditure to more than £34 million.
The Minister for Health and Children, Mr Martin, has authorised £10.07 million for a wide range of procedures and £1.8 million for a cardiac initiative.
Announcing the funding yesterday, Mr Martin said half the new allocation would be paid up front and the rest on a results basis. "I don't want the money to disappear into the black hole of overall budgets," he added.
"Where an agency is underachieving its targets, the funding available will be redirected to where it can make a greater impact. In my view it is essential that we reward the good performers and the detailed monitoring arrangements that will now be notified to the chief executive officers will ensure that this happens."
Measures to reduce the waiting lists include maximising bed space and patient turnover by keeping beds open in summer, extending opening hours of day wards and operating theatres, performing more procedures at weekends, leasing out nursing home beds and convalescent beds, and using bed-and-breakfast accommodation for day-care patients.
The Department of Health is also to promote greater cross-contracting of waiting-list work between public hospitals. Some of the work will go to private hospitals and hospitals in Northern Ireland. The latter will be used mainly by the North-Eastern and North-Western Health Boards.
The largest tranche goes to the Eastern Regional Health Authority, which will receive £5 million for 3,600 procedures. The next largest allocation goes to the Mid-Western Health Board with £850,000 for 800 procedures.
The South-Eastern Health Board will receive £475,000 for 608 procedures, the Western Health Board £853,000 for 600 procedures and the North-Eastern Health Board £808,000 for 430 procedures.
The figures for the Midland Health Board and Southern Health Board have still to be finalised.
The £1.8 million for treatment of cardiac patients is in addition to £22 million already allocated. St James's Hospital in Dublin received £125 million of the original allocation to reduce the number of patients waiting more than a year for treatment by 150.
Crumlin's children's hospital received £700,000 to provide procedures for children in the UK, and Cork University College Hospital £25,000 towards improved facilities.
Since 1993, £122.7 million has been allocated to reducing waiting lists. The list stood at 34,370 last March, 2,485 less than at the end of 1999, when waiting lists peaked because of the nurses' strike.
Mr Martin described the figures since the beginning of the year as "very encouraging". This was in spite of the high prevalence of "flu-like illnesses". Since taking over as Minister he said he had made reduction of the waiting lists a major priority.
However, he declined to set a date for the Government to reach its target of no public patient having to wait more than 12 months for treatment
He rejected claims that some patients had to wait up to seven years for procedures and said there were no figures to support such claims. A new process is to be used to measure the waiting lists.