Numbers awaiting outpatient appointment exceeds 400,000

Numbers of people waiting for an outpatient appointment has exceeded 400,000 for the first time, new figures show.

The waiting list for outpatient appointments has been increasing since the beginning of 2014 and by the end of last month it had reached 405,501, according to the National Purchase Treatment Fund.

Almost half of those on the list - 184,529 people - have been waiting for an appointment for more than six months.

The overall list has grown by 35 per cent since the start of last year.

The situation for long waiters is much worse - the numbers on the list for over 12 months have swollen by more than 1,500 per cent in that time.

Varadkar’s challenge

The continuing rise in outpatient lists, which is matched in increases in the number of people waiting for day-case and inpatient treatment, poses a serious challenge for Minister for Health Leo Varadkar, who has struggled with a trolley crisis affecting hospital emergency departments since the start of the year.

That issue forced many hospitals to cancel inpatient appointments and elective procedures as resources and staff were diverted to tackle emergency department overcrowding.

Having secured the agreement of Cabinet colleagues for an additional €75 million to deal with the trolley crisis, Mr Varadkar may now be forced to seek yet more money to reduce outpatient, day-case and inpatient waiting lists.

The overall outpatient waiting list figure compares to less than 386,000 at Christmas and 399,000 at the end of February.

Delays are worst outside Dublin, with the longest waiting lists recorded by the South/South West Hospital Group and the Saolta University Health Care Group, which covers hospitals in the west and northwest.

The list includes 77,319 who are on the list for more than a year. This compares to just 4,626 at the end of 2013.

Funding diverted

Former minister for health James Reilly had succeeded in reducing the list from a high of 103,000 in March 2013 by diverting funding to a special unit dedicated to reducing lists.

However, the numbers started rising again once the additional funding was withdrawn.

Some 9,569 patients are now waiting more than two years and 2,712 more than three years. Worst of all, 678 people are on the list for over four years.

Galway University Hospital has the longest waiting list in the State, at 36,205.The worst waiting times are in Tallaght Hospital, Galway and University Hospital Waterford, all of which have over 17,000 patients waiting for outpatient appointment for longer than six months.

The waiting lists for day-case and inpatient procedures also continue to grow. There were 45,162 people waiting for day-case treatment at the end of March, up from 43,888 at Christmas.

The number of patients waiting for an inpatient procedure grew from 19,917 to 21,710 over the last three months.

Of the 66,872 people on the inpatient/day-case list, 26,573 are there more than six months, 16,067 are on the list for over nine months and 8,717 are waiting for treatment for more than a year.