More than 1,500 patients across the State were waiting over 12 months for surgery at the end of last year, according to a newly published report.
The latest annual report from the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) points out that while this is a reduction on the numbers who were waiting at the end of 2007 it is "unacceptable" that patients are still waiting over a year for treatment at a small number of hospitals.
Pat O'Byrne, chief executive of the NTPF, named three hospitals in particular with the longest waiters as Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, Dublin; Temple Street Children's Hospital in Dublin and Limerick Regional Hospital. These hospitals accounted for 42 per cent of the patients waiting over 12 months for treatment, he said.
Meanwhile he pointed out that the NTPF, which was set up in 2002 to arrange private care for public patients waiting more than three months for treatment, has now arranged treatment for more than 150,000 patients.
He said that patients were on average waiting two to five years for treatment when the fund was set up but now the median waiting time for patients to be treated, once they are seen by a hospital consultant, is just 2.6 months. However some patients may wait years to get to see a consultant in outpatients in the first place after being referred by their GP.
Outpatient waiting lists, for example, which are now being tackled by the NTPF, were reduced from three years to one year in the speciality of dermatology at St James's Hospital, Dublin, in the past year while orthopaedic outpatient appointments in the south east were reduced from five years to three years.
Mr O'Byrne said over 50 per cent of those patients waiting over a year for surgery were day cases which could be treated by the NTPF. But he pointed out that research amongst the longest waiters carried out recently indicated many of them had been offered treatment but didn't take it up. He said 75 per cent of them had been offered treatment but did not respond or did not attend their scheduled appointments and 9 per cent declined the offer of faster NTPF treatment. He said one would therefore have to question why some of these people were on waiting lists at all.
The NTPF's budget was €100 million in 2008 and it has been cut by €10 million this year. However it still hopes to treat around 30,000 patients in 2009, though it acknowledges waiting times may lengthen by a number of weeks as a result of the cut in its funding. It said cutting waiting times for colonoscopies was among its priorities this year.
Minister for Health Mary Harney, who launched the report, said that by any standards the NTPF had been a terrific success even though it had its opponents.
She insisted it was providing value for money. "I don't believe there is any hospital in the country that would have treated 36,000 patients last year for the budget that we give to the NTPF," she said.