An action plan to clear hospital waiting lists has been drawn up by the Eastern Regional Health Authority, where 40 per cent of patients on the list have been waiting for more than a year.
The 11-point plan was agreed after a meeting of the ERHA, the biggest health authority in the State, which at the end of last December had of 19,361 people waiting for hospital admission, nearly 53 per cent of the national figure.
The chief executive of the EHRA, Mr Donal O'Shea, said that specialities with the longest waiting lists were ENT, orthopaedics, ophthalmology, plastic surgery and vascular surgery.
He said up to 40 per cent of those undergoing elective work in some specialities and 20 per cent of all patients in acute hospitals came from outside the region.
It is planned that each hospital which has not cleared its waiting list in the past six months will be asked to do so to ensure that patients waiting longest are treated.
The EHRA will also examine urgently how the capacity to treat additional patients can be increased in the short term for specialities with the longest waiting lists and times. It will keep a waiting-list database and use the information to deal with peaks by speciality.
Hospitals in a position to carry out additional work will be asked to provide the EHRA with details of additional procedures it could carry out and the cost.
Other plans are for hospitals to examine the potential for day surgery and an increased use of operating theatres either on an out-of-hours basis, for instance at weekends, or when existing clinical staff have leave booked.
Examinations will also be carried out of whether lengths of stay in hospital can be reduced, for instance by rehabilitation or home support.
Discussions are to take place with private hospitals to see if they could carry out procedures for the public service.
The EHRA is examining the position of people from outside the region on waiting lists for procedures in EHRA hospitals. It will contact the other health authorities about their capacities to reduce lists.
Links with GPs are being reviewed by the EHRA on demand referral patterns, and the systems in place to treat patients based on need.
The EHRA is undertaking a bed-capacity study in the region to identify the existing capacity and examine trends in the use of acute beds over the past five years. The plans come at the same time as an announcement that £641 million has been allocated to the region by the Department of Health for building and equipping healthcare facilities over the six years from 2001 to 2006.