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ALMOST ONE MILLION patient appointments were outstanding in the first half of 2018, new figures have revealed.
An analysis of various health waiting lists, obtained by Fianna Fáil’s deputy leader Dara Calleary, has shown that there were 997,258 patient appointments outstanding in the first half of the year.
Calleary has described the situation as a national scandal.
A total of 511,415 people were waiting on outpatient appointments in June of this year, while over 148,000 outpatients had been waiting over one year to see a consultant.
Meanwhile, another 135,094 people were waiting on diagnostic appointments in April of this year.
“The vast majority of this list is based on the National Treatment Purchase Fund monthly waiting times. In June 2018, some 717,419 were on the lists compiled by the fund,” Calleary said.
“However, the NTPF does not publish waiting lists for a number of diagnostic scans and the latest available figures (April 2018) showed a further 135,000 waiting for MRIs, ultrasounds and CT scans,” he said.
The very fact that there are almost one million people waiting for an appointment speaks for itself. Never before have we seen a situation whereby people have been failed so badly by a government.
The data also shows that there were 37,229 people waiting for either speech and language therapy or assessment in June 2018.
A further 31,361 were waiting for an occupational therapy assessment in the same month.
Calleary said that the HSE was unable to provide figures for the number of people waiting for actual occupational therapy treatment.
“The scale of these waiting lists is truly shocking and highlights very clearly the level of demand and the lack of capacity available to meet it,” he said.
“There will be no improvement in the situation unless there is investment in capacity, and as our population continues to live longer, it poses more serious issues for our health service.
“The time for grand plans, staged strategies and PR launches is over, what we need now is action.”
Additional funding
A spokesperson for Minister for Health Simon Harris has said that €50 million was being invested in the NTPF this year to tackle waiting lists.
“The health service will treat 3.3 million outpatients this year and deliver 1.7m hospital operations or procedures – outside the additional work under the National Treatment Purchase Fund,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
Of the 1.7 million procedures, the spokesperson said an estimated 435,000 are from the waiting list.
“Inpatient figures for the end of June show 78,000 patients are waiting for a hospital inpatient or day case procedure. This represents a drop of 8,100, or 9.4%, in just 11 months,” they said.
“The Outpatient Waiting List remains a significant challenge but the Minister is committed to continuing to work to ensure that the progress we’re seeing on the hospital waiting lists is also reflected in the outpatient lists.
“It is worth noting that in 2017 almost half a million (477,000) outpatients did not attend their appointment. Therefore, the validation of waiting lists is an important part of the successful management of waiting lists and clinics in ensuring timely access for patients.”
The HSE has been contacted for comment.
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Nothing new here..
Pot and kettle springs to mind with FFG..
@Willy Malone: Unions have ruined Health. Nothing can be changed without the threat of strikes. Any reform comes at a price. Doctors double-jobbing is the biggest scandal of them all. No incentive to reform by staff. Total and utter minefield. Will never be fit for purpose. Greed from top to bottom.
@Simon Peters: it’s all the doctor’s fault?
Some wonderful insights on this forum
@Simon Peters: A friend of mine works as a nurse in a supervisory capacity in a unit in the country It was a hospital but now is a glorified nursing home. She is told weekly that she cannot hire any agency staff or give any overtime so as a result she finds herself doing normal nursing duties because she just couldn’t watch while someone has to sit in their own pooh all day. As a result she has to go in on her day off to do the paperwork because the volume of it is overwhelming There are 20 beds in this unit but there are 14 staff in administration 6 of which cant wont and refuse to use computers. Imagine in 2018 someone in a clerical position who wont use a computer!!!!!! Coincidently these are the people on the highest salaries one and a half times what the nurses are on. This girls cousin is an accountant and was seconded to a large Dublin public hospital because their financial controller was incompetent Her company was paid €330 per hour for her time there. On top of that the salaries paid to none core staff were amazing Most of the porters were getting over 80 grand a year when their overtime was factored in. There is money everywhere in the Hse except to pay people who might make you better
@EFitz66: 100 percent agree I have been saying this for years, the unions have the whole system destroyed, there are 5 admin staff in Ireland for 2 in th Uk for each patient. Until we get a government who will take on the unions and take the pain for a while nothing will ever change. People need to be made aware what the issues really are in our hospitals, the media should be highlighting this constintaly but you don’t hear the facts much from our corrupt media lets face it.
@Peter Hughes: Absolutely and the 2 admin staff in the Uk system are not the most productive I can tell you. Two hospitals in Dublin have the exact same diagnostic machine in their labs 3 staff in the private hospital do 4 times more tests that 5 staff in the public hospital and no one gives a toss
@Simon Peters: if it weren’t for the unions, I’d be working for €10 an hour in a pathology lab doing 70 hours a week. Cop on.
@Simon Peters: probably sums up the country as a whole
This situation will not be resolved with FG in government, it won’t even be tackled, they don’t have the backbone to call out all the chiefs doing SFA In the HSE.
If the HSE were to be inspected by their own HIQA standards they’d be shut down immediately.
@Simon Peters: The unions? You lunatic. This is systemic top-tier planning inability for decades! This ‘new plan’ is like giving a cancer victim some panadol (very expensive, heavily levied panadol). We (as a nation of people) are simply not ready to run our own shop yet.
@Ciara Ni Mhurchu: Actually you wouldn’t You would work 48 hours a week and that was not brought about by the unions. That was an Eu directive and the government were allowed to make junior doctors exempt at the time There are too many people far too many people in the Hse doing nothing On top of that there are loads of ways technology could do menial tasks like form filling etc, Labour is the Hse’s biggest expense so they need to reduce the labour cost in every area it can and use the savings to increase the pay of key staff so they will not go abroad for more money and attract more professionals to come here to work in our health service. As a country we are spending enough on health but the wrong people are getting the money Simple as that
Really shocking how little progress has been made by this government and successive FFG governments. Leo’s and Harris’ positions are no longer tenable.
@Toon Army: ah you see this is incredible progress for them. Their aim is to break the HSE so the public outcry will soften us up for the introduction of private operators. Just look at the NHS in Britain…. Seems like it’s about to become Virgin Health ™.
@Caitriona Conlan: *asses
Headlines should read “Another National Scandal “
I know that sounds really bad but people need to officially complain. I had an incident recently and I thought there were no repercussions. The authorities encouraged me and explained that the data is important to build a picture. so if you’re having any problem even if it’s very small, please report it officially and help these guys get the data they need. Unfortunately, in this world do you need to have the actual data to make a decision. please do not moan here unless you have helped by providing the relevant information.
With so many unfilled consultant posts, and the poor state of the health service in general, this should come as no surprise.
Until recruitment and retention issues are addressed these numbers will not improve.
Seems so obvious…
@Disgruntled Doctor: Like housing and broadband, this is ideological. The mighty market is king, and the HSE is a socialist hangover which must be crushed to make way for full liberalisation by private operators. All three of these issues can be fixed by the State. However FFG are in thrall to thatcherite policy. See also, selling Aer Lingus, post office closures, the continued existence of M50 tolling, the attempted privatisation of Water via Irish Water (a billing company at best), closure of urban bus routes, privatising means testing for social welfare recipients, and the whole scale changing of language on government websites from “citizen” to “customer”. All planned.
@Disgruntled Doctor: I wouldn’t go on as if we hire more consultants that hospitals would be better because there was a show on Primetime a few weeks ago that shows consultants that have contracts to work both public and private don’t do nearly as much work in public settings compared to private even though their being paid to work in public hospitals.
@Mark McDermott: The consultants are incentivized to keep the public waiting lists long as it means that there is more call for their private work.
@Mark McDermott: Dont worry Mark , they cannot attract any consultants to work in the public system with all the so called perks of the job- ever wonder why that is?
Some neck on FF to complain about this since they are propping up the government.
@Mark McDermott
I heard Dara Calleary on Newstalk this morning, bemoaning the funding for the National Treatment Purchase Fund. That fund is part of the reason we’re in this mess – when the country was flush with money we pushed patients on the waiting list into expensive private options, instead of restructuring the system to meet the ongoing demand. As soon as that fund diminished, wait lists started to shoot up again from an already high base.
I got a letter from Beaumont Hospital for an appointment “sometime in the next 30 months”. I rang them to ask if that would be a morning or an afternoon.
This country is a mess
@munsterman: it is munsterman, but it’s our country, and until we get up off our sky sports soccer watching assets to hold these asshats to account it will remain in a mess. Grown men spend more time worrying about Liverpool and arsenal than engaging with these issues. Fact.
@Caitriona Conlan: Not all Irish men watch follow English football, quite a few of us go and watch the LoI.
FG’s Ireland. No likes or thumbs up for Leo.
@Mark Jones: Nothing to do with party politics. This institution is beyond the reach of government. Its run by Union officials.
@Simon Peters: What institution is beyond the government reach?
@Mark McDermott: Try change working conditions for Doctors/Consultants/Nurses and you will have a strike on your hands. In reality the unions hold the power here, not the Government.
@Do the Bort man: The “unions” don’t make policy, don’t run hospitals. The “unions” are the scapegoat for the deliberate destruction of the public health service by a neoliberal FFG government.
@Dave Doyle: I never suggested that unions make policy or run hospitals. However, any changes to policy relating to working conditions for staff must get sign off by the unions. The idea that a government would deliberately destroy a public health system, like you suggest, is laughable.
@Do the Bort man: They are deliberately destroying the health service though, through their own ineptitude . Do they care? It appears not.
It’s a simple matter of logistics, a population that has increased by 1.5 million and a health service built for half that, so what do you expect? 30 years of running the health service into the ground has not helped either. Can you name one new hospital built in the last 20 years…no me neither!
@mary conneely: Beacon and the Hermitage. The new CUH, Galway clinic and the children’s hospital will be open in the next 5.
@Ciara Ni Mhurchu: the mater private in cork as well
@mary conneely: The problem is we have way too many small, understaffed hospitals. We need to consolidate our hospitals into a fewer larger better resourced ones. That’s the way it is in the UK and the rest of Europe. Local resistance and parish pump politics won’t allow that to happen.
The contempt this government have shown to the people of this republic is nothing more than scandalous, fianna fail do themselves a great disservice keeping this incompetent shower in office .they have played the waiting game and it has backfired ,Martin should be shown the door .it really is time for them to move on .enough is enough
@Anthony Gallagher: And you actually thing FF will resolve this in office?, nothing will change once we keep voting for them and FG.
So thats one fifth of the population and counting, thats a lot of votes simon
Now forgive me as Maths was never my strong point but Ireland’s population is 4.7 Million and there was 1 million appointments on the go… Isn’t that a high ould figure compared to our population. Joke.
@Paul: Many would be waiting for more than one outpatient appointment
F.F If it causing you so much moral trouble , Pull the plug and have election and tell us how you would fix the health service
This is the logical result of a government without mandate and secret confidence and supply handshakes. Have we had enough yet?
Two major issues is lack of money, and unions. Anyone on a waiting list will only get a scan done Monday – Friday between the hours of 9-5. Change that to 9am – 9pm 7 days a week and you gain another 39 hours per week. Would Unions allow this for public patients? Not a chance. We need more doctors/consultants, but we also need to pay them more. There is a reason Irish doctors and nurses are leaving, they get better pay and conditions elsewhere.
@Do the Bort man: Nothing to do with the unions. It’s all to do with government policy. Just like figures on the homeless are screwed to reflect what the government want us to believe, now the figures re hospital lists are screwed to hide the reality. Unions don’t determine this. Government does.
Funding is adequate. But when you spend abnormal sums on agency staff because someone in the know runs the agency. Employ 7 over paid clipboard operators for every doctor, the funds go nowhere near where they are needed. Spending 8 million a month on retiring consultants, only to re employ them is doing nothing for patient care.
The problems in the public health service are the same problems that has everyone on water restrictions. The deliberate destruction of both by a neoliberal FFG government hell bent on privatising both. Unions aren’t responsible for that.
@Dave Doyle: Nothing to do with Unions? If Simon Harris decided that consultants must work some weekends to see public patients, not the much higher paying private patients, do you think the unions would allow this? Funding is far from adequate, the reason there is an overspend on agency staff is due to the amount we pay our doctors and nurses directly employed by the HSE. Starting salary for a nurse in Ireland is around €23k, its around €40 in Australia. If we paid doctors and nurses more then the agency spend would be much less, and we would not need to keep rehiring retired consultants.
@Dave Doyle: I would normaly agree with you on a lot of things, but the Unions do have a large piece to play here. Whenever any reforms are tried or better work practices put in place and people dont like it they go to their Union and then its stopped. I have worked in the past for the HSE and eveything we were tyryingt to do was impedded at every step.
For example a new process was being put in place ofr a task that would reduce the time required and people to do it by 50%, Unions stoppped it.
@Irish Bob: Ok, you worked there, you have first hand knowledge. I see a few of the FG fanboys blaming everything on the unions. If the unions were a real problem they would be gone, but they have their uses for political reasons. 15 Billion per year should be enough, were it going to where it was needed. Only a fraction does.
@Dave Doyle: I’m an FG fan boy? Maybe look at my profile image!
@Do the Bort man: If we were to move to a 7 day a week service or at least an extended service in the evenings/weekends, that would mean hiring a lot more doctors/technicians etc. They can’t fill the positions that already exist!
but given 50% of the population has private insurance , it is a high ould number.
Over 2 years waiting on a knee appointment. Got a letter last month to fill in and send back if I wanted to stay on the list. I feel so sorry for people that are really sick. This country/government is a joke
Its disgraceful but it wouldn’t be much different if FF were in gov. And FF are so poor now that I didn’t know that calleary is the deputy leader!
What we need is to put the hospitals under independent control, hire and fire people based on experience and competence. Hold breauacrats to account. Pay hospitals per patient seen or procedure done. This will incentivize hospitals to reduce waiting lists. The system incentivizes stasis. Let private clinics and hospitals compete for public patients as long as they accept the going rate the state is willing to pay for a given procedure/scan etc. Slaintecare is a joke and will only make things worse.
@Damon16: It is the consultants and senior doctors that are at the root of the waiting lists. They deliberately try to get people to go private, and the longer people have to wait for HSE treatment, the more likely they are to opt to go private. Private treatment is far more profitable. We need to separate public and private staff to eliminate this conflict of interest. The government doesn’t have the will to do it.
FF is supporting FG Government throughout undeclared National emergencies in Homelessness, Housing and Health so warnings issued by Consultants and Nurses not URGENTLY tackled…..WHY?It’s not good enough,the people including children deserve better than this!
Why isn’t the Dail recalled so that these emergencies affecting men, women and children are URGENTLY tackled?The Dail recalled re the Apple Judgement!
The waiting lists in the public system are solely the fault of the public system, the model we use to deliver healthcare in the public system and HSE mismanagement. It’s NOT a funding issue. It’s not an issue with front line staff. It’s not an issue with private insurance. Doctors and nurses work hours and conditions that would never be accepted by any other public sector or private sector workers in the state. It is the front-line staff that keep the system afloat in spite of the dysfunction of the system and HSE. The idea being pushed now to give more control over the system to the HSE under slainte care will only result in more dysfunction and longer waiting lists
One in 4 of us is sick. Jonathan Swift was right after all.
I thought it was “only” 707,000.
This is not new!
Lets remember 2017 – “A further €55 million has been allocated to the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF), which arranges the provision of hospital treatment and collects national waiting list information — a three-fold increase on the organisation’s 2017 funding.”
Nothing has changed…
Consultants and senior doctors are actively discouraging foreign doctors from coming to work in Ireland. Some of them do their damnedest to get public patients to attend their private clinics. They are on a go-slow to further than aim. We need separate staff for public and private, as there is a clear conflict of interest with the present scheme. There is also a clear conflict of interest with CEOs, when they are head of both public and private hospitals (Nicholas Jermyn, ex-CEO if Vincents public AND private wings). With their HSE hat on, they are supposed to negotiate maximum payment for private consultant’s use of public facilities, and vice versa. Guess which organisation gets the best deal ?
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