Hospital consultants criticise ‘life-threatening’ waiting list numbers

The organisation representing hospital consultants has criticised as “life-threatening” the high number of patients on waiting lists for hospital appointments and procedures.

New figures from the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF), the State agency set up to reduce waiting lists, show a small drop in the number of people waiting for outpatient appointments.

There were 584,626 people on waiting lists for outpatient appointments in hospitals at the end of last year, a drop on the 602,832 waiting at the end of last November.

More than 150,000 of those patients had been waiting for longer than a year for an appointment, the figures show.

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There were 81,568 patients waiting for inpatient or day-case treatment at the end of December, an increase on 80,232 waiting for appointments or treatment the month before.

The Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA) said the figures showed there were about 870,000 on some form of NTPF waiting list at the end of last year.

The organisation said this represented a drop of only 9,000 when compared to waiting lists at the start of 2022.

Prof Robert Landers, president of the IHCA, said “this is a life-threatening situation for patients seeking care in our hospitals and requires a ‘999-like’ emergency response from Government.”

The consultants’ association said the Health Service Executive (HSE) was more than 100,000 hospital appointments off of a previous promise to reduce waiting lists by 18 per cent by the end of last year.

The hospital system has been under serious strain in recent weeks, with a surge of flu, Covid-19 and RSV cases leading to record levels of overcrowding in emergency departments and patients being left waiting on trolleys.

In response to the pressures the HSE has said several hospitals had likely pushed out non-urgent elective surgeries and appointments.

Prof Landers said as a result waiting lists were “likely to deteriorate further” due to appointments and procedures being cancelled because of the current pressure on hospitals.

The huge numbers of people waiting for hospital appointments was a “wholly unacceptable situation”, he said.