HOSPITALS THAT fail to refer public patients to the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF), which is trying to cut waiting times for surgery and medical procedures, face financial penalties, it was announced yesterday.
The warning was issued by Minister for Health Mary Harney after the NTPF confirmed there were still 2,155 public patients waiting more than a year for surgery.
The fund was set up in 2002 to buy treatment in private hospitals for patients waiting more than three months for operations.
It was established after the 2001 national health strategy promised no patient would have to wait more than three months for treatment by the end of 2004.
Yesterday the NTPF confirmed there were 21,470 patients waiting more than three months for treatment at hospitals across the State. More than 16,000 of them were awaiting surgery.
At the launch of the NTPF’s annual report for 2007, chairman of the fund John O’Dwyer said more than half the patients waiting over 12 months for treatment were on waiting lists at a handful of hospitals. These hospitals include Letterkenny and Sligo general hospitals, Tallaght Hospital, Tullamore General Hospital and Cork University Hospital.
Mr O’Dwyer said he was “not happy at all” that there were over 2,000 patients waiting over a year for treatment. The aim of the fund was to bring this to zero by the end of the year, and he urged hospitals not referring long-waiting patients to the fund to do so.
Ms Harney said there was no excuse for hospitals not referring patients to the fund. “The capacity exists, the money exists and there’s no justification for having 2,155 patients waiting over 12 months.” She said the idea for the NTPF came from Norway, where hospitals were obliged by statute to refer patients to it. She had not ruled out going down this road here if hospitals continued to fail to refer patients to the fund.
However, she said in the first instance this year the HSE would use rates at which hospitals refer patients to the fund as a key performance indicator, which would be used to feed into the funding hospitals receive. She said funding would be matched with performance. However, two of the hospitals criticised for not co-operating with the fund – Sligo and Letterkenny – said many of the patients that remained on their waiting lists more than 12 months were patients who declined an offer of treatment from the NTPF. Cork University Hospital said some of its patients also declined NTPF treatment and some could only be treated at the hospital.
Opposition parties criticised the latest waiting lists figures, which do not include those patients waiting under three months for treatment. When these are included there are 40,000 patients on waiting lists for in-patient and day-case treatment.
Fine Gael’s health spokesman, Dr James Reilly, said they represented another broken promise by Government to cut waiting lists. He called for the appointment of more hospital consultants.
Labour’s health spokeswoman Jan O’Sullivan said the waiting list situation was getting worse.
Sinn Féin’s health spokesman, Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin, said that while Ms Harney blamed hospitals, the reality was that the fund could not compensate for the shortage of hospital beds.
Pat O’Byrne, chief executive of the NTPF, said the fund had made huge progress in reducing waiting lists and waiting times for patients. He said the average waiting times in 2002, when the fund was established, were two to five years, and now they were two to five months. It has arranged treatment for more than 110,000 patients.