Wind down of treatment purchase fund was regrettable, says Harris

The Government wants a reactivated National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF)to provide about 1,500 endoscopy procedures for patients on waiting lists in the months ahead, the Minister for Health Simon Harris has said.

Speaking on Monday, he said it was regrettable that the NTPF was wound down in recent years.

“I do not think that was a good policy decision”, he said.

Mr Harris said the NTPF offered a useful tool for tackling waiting lists and it would now be reactivated.

The NTPF collates data on waiting lists and in the past was used to buy care for patients on lengthy public hospital waiting lists.

The NTPF effectively fell out of favour during James Reilly’s period as Minister for Health.

Mr Harris said the NTPF would also be given €15 million in the Budget in October to tackle waiting lists in addition to the new immediate initiative to provide additional endoscopy services.

He also said the Government would be providing a further €50 million to reduce waiting lists.

He said he would be deciding in the weeks ahead, in advance if the Budget, on how this €50million pot will be divided between public hospitals and the NTPF.

“I am keeping an open mind on that until the department of health, the HSE and the NTPF come back to me. “

Mr Harris said waiting lists were “unacceptably high”.

Last Friday new figures showed there were more than 420,000 people waiting for a hospital out-patient appointment at the end of June.

This represented an increase of about 5,000 over the figures for May.

At the same time, the total number of people waiting for an in-patient or day case procedure in a public hospital also increased over recent weeks.

The NTPF figures showed there were 76,696 people on such waiting lists last month.