The National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF), established as an initiative in the Government's Health Strategy to assist health boards and hospitals in achieving waiting list targets for public patients, yesterday published a patient satisfaction survey.
One year after the first of 5,500 people were treated in the Republic, Northern Ireland and Britain under the scheme, patient satisfaction is extremely high. Ninety-six per cent of patients rated the overall experience of NTPF treatment as good to excellent, while 93 per cent would recommend the NTPF to others.
Although the percentage of male respondents was especially low and the survey was carried out by the NTPF rather than by an independent monitor, the initiative has clearly been an overwhelming success, as judged by its consumers.
The purchase fund has meant that thousands of patients who have been waiting for years for hip replacements, eye operations and plastic surgery procedures have finally received the treatment denied to them by our beleaguered public health service. People in pain and with remediable disabilities have every reason to be grateful to the NTPF and its efficiency.
The finding that only three per cent of those surveyed had heard about the scheme from their general practitioner may reflect a general unease about the initiative within the medical profession. Clearly the NTPF has some work to do in persuading doctors of the merit of spending €31 million of public money this year in arranging hospital treatment for so called long waiters.This may be due, at least in part, to the continuing problems health professionals face in having acutely ill patients admitted to hospital in a prompt and appropriate manner.
People are regularly waiting 72 hours and longer in hospital accident and emergency departments because of an ongoing shortage of beds. These patients, acutely unwell with serious medical conditions, have little privacy or comfort. Staff are forced to offer treatment in a wholly unsuitable environment that is more akin to an army field hospital than a modern treatment facility.
While the NTPF has significantly reduced the number of adults waiting more than 12 months and children waiting more than six months for necessary treatment, the health system's ability to offer prompt treatment to the seriously ill in society continues to deteriorate. And as the public finances worsen it is time for Government to reconsider the wisdom of diverting public money to the private sector via the NTPF, while the infrastructure of public hospitals remains starved of adequate funding.