Around 29,000 patients could be on hospital waiting lists across the State. This figure has been extrapolated from waiting-list figures for 19 hospitals published yesterday by the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF).
It said there were 11,250 patients "actively" waiting for surgery, 5,442 patients waiting for surgery who were scheduled to have their operations within three months, and 1,258 patients waiting for surgery who were "not currently ready or available" for it at the 19 hospitals.
In addition, it said another 3,806 patients were waiting for medical procedures at these hospitals which include the main Dublin hospitals and several regional hospitals.
The fund said these 19 hospitals traditionally represented 74 per cent of patients on hospital waiting lists. The total numbers waiting at the 19 hospitals comes to 21,756, and if these represent three-quarters of all those waiting the total number waiting could be around 29,000.
It will be the end of the year before data for waiting lists at all 35 hospitals, including those in the northeast, northwest, midlands and southeast, is available.
The fund now has overall responsibility for collating waiting-list data, and the figures it published yesterday reveal almost a quarter of the 11,250 patients "actively" waiting for surgery at 19 hospitals have been on waiting lists for more than a year. Those waiting for more than a year include 286 children.
NTPF chief executive Pat O'Byrne said the fact that so many patients were still waiting for more than 12 months was "disappointing".
The hospitals singled out for having most patients waiting more than a year for surgery include Beaumont, St Vincent's and Cappagh orthopaedic hospitals in Dublin, and Cork University Hospital and the Mercy Hospital in Cork.
Mr O'Byrne said some hospital consultants were still not co-operating with the fund. Cork University Hospital, in particular, was not referring as many patients as it could to the fund.
Information on waiting times for common procedures at the 19 hospitals where waiting lists have now been counted can be viewed online by patients and doctors at www.ntpf.ie or www.ptr.ie.
The data will allow patients to seek to be referred to the hospital with the shortest waiting time.
Mr O'Byrne said the fund now had the names of all those on these waiting lists, and it would make direct contact with people waiting more than three months and offer to get them treated.
The fund was set up in 2002 to arrange private treatment for patients waiting long periods on public hospital waiting lists.
The Government had promised in 2001 that no patient would wait more than three months for surgery by the end of 2004.
The Irish Hospital Consultants' Association (IHCA) and the Irish Medical Organisation said the NTPF's figures showed more hospital beds were required. "This report suggests that there are now 29,400 patients on waiting lists for elective treatment. This compares to 27,200 when waiting list figures were last published in September 2003," said the IHCA's assistant secretary general Donal Duffy.