CHILDREN REQUIRING diagnostic tests to check whether they have certain conditions like Coeliac disease can be waiting up to 18 months for the examinations at the largest children’s hospital in the State.
Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, Dublin, confirmed yesterday that the next available appointments for a non-urgent endoscopy – which involves the insertion of a camera under general anaesthetic into the body – are in 12 to 18 months’ time.
The diagnostic tests may be ordered in some cases where children present with tummy pains or diarrhoea or on foot of blood test results. The children can be waiting up to nine months to be seen by a specialist before they are put on the waiting list for the diagnostic test in the first place.
In a statement, the hospital said there were 150 children on the waiting list for an elective endoscopy procedure, and 16 patients waiting for a colonoscopy. It stressed that it was working with the HSE to address the problem.
Prof Billy Bourke, a paediatric gastroenterologist at the hospital, said the hospital could only do nine scopes a week but demand was for double this, which meant waiting times were getting longer.
“If children come with tummy pain today they will be given an appointment for November next year. It’s as bad as that. We are about to open a diary for 2012, which is insanity,” he said. “There is nowhere in the developed world where you have this wait for an endoscopy like that. In the UK the wait can’t go beyond six to eight weeks,” he added.
To have children waiting 18 months for a diagnostic test that only took 20 minutes was “unconscionable”, he continued.
Prof Bourke said he and his colleagues had been writing to hospital management and the HSE expressing concern about this for years. “We are deeply concerned that it’s dangerous . . . somebody on the waiting list could get very sick very quickly and there could be a majorly bad outcome for a patient as a result of this,” he said.
The hospital said patients were prioritised by consultants on the basis of clinical need. It also said some patients had been referred to the National Treatment Purchase Fund, and it was working with the other children’s hospitals in Dublin on a proposal to have a common gastrointestinal service.
A report last month found the three children’s hospitals were significantly underusing their operating theatre.
It was not clear whether this was at the root of the current problem, or whether resources were also a factor.
Minister for Health James Reilly said his department assured him there was no immediate waiting time problem for children who might be seriously ill.