Press Release: Friday 10 January 2025
Monthly waiting list figures – December 2024
The latest hospital waiting list figures for December published today by the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) underline the progress achieved through the multi-annual action plan approach to addressing long wait times for care. The latest hospital activity report, published by the Health Service Executive (HSE), demonstrates increased levels of hospital activity in the delivery of scheduled and unscheduled care services.
Significant progress continues to be made in terms of the length of time patients are waiting. Almost 85% of patients have been waiting less than a year, and in terms of the longest waiting patients, in comparison with the same time last year there has been a c.12% reduction in the total number of patients waiting over 12 months, and a corresponding reduction of c.20% in the number waiting over 18 months.
There have also been improvements in average waiting times, which have reduced by 0.7 months from 7.2 to 6.5 in comparison with last year. OPD has reduced by 0.7 months. IPDC reduced by 0.4 months and GI Scope reduced by 0.3 months.
Improvements in terms of the length of time patients are waiting can also be seen in the progress achieved towards the Sláintecare targets. Since the pandemic peaks, there has been a c. 30% reduction in the number of people waiting longer than the Sláintecare targets, equating to almost 191,000 people.
Continuing improvements in the Outpatient Department (OPD) waiting list have contributed to an overall reduction in the total outpatient waiting list for the fourth month in a row. At the end of December, there were 673,962 people on the total acute hospital waiting lists.
Our acute hospitals are delivering higher levels of activity and treating many more patients than ever before. The latest hospital rolling 12-month activity report published by the HSE gives insight into acute activity levels, with millions of patients being seen and treated annually within our hospital service. The report outlines that there was c. 3.9 million OPD, and c. 1.9 million Inpatient and Daycase (IPDC) attendances during the period covered by the report. In comparison with the levels of activity delivered in the full year 2022, these figures represent increases of c. 13% for OPD and c.11% for IPDC activity.
In addition to this planned care, our hospitals also treated c. 1.8 million patients during this same period in emergency care, which represents a c. 9% increase on the full year 2022 and reflects the continuing demands on our hospitals.
However, whilst we have seen improvements in waiting times and in the level of activity being delivered, our growing and aging population is leading to increased demand and unprecedented levels of additions to waiting lists have resulted in the volume of patients waiting across lists remaining higher than we would wish.
There were 1.814 million people added to, and 1.812 million people removed from our acute hospital waiting lists in 2024. While we do not wish to see a growth in numbers waiting for care, growth in the number of referrals to our hospital services has a positive aspect as it is indicative of people accessing the services that they need, an increased awareness of services and reflects an expansion of services.
The Department is engaging with the HSE and NTPF to continue with the Waiting List Action Plan (WLAP) approach in 2025, to ensure that we can continue to build on the positive progress achieved in recent years.
