Monthly waiting list figures – August 2024
- Waiting Times Falling
- Number of Patients Being Treated Increasing
New hospital waiting list figures published today by the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) demonstrate the progress achieved through the multi-annual action plan approach implemented by the Government to address long waiting times for care. The latest hospital activity report, published by the Health Service Executive (HSE), shows increased levels of activity in the delivery of scheduled and unscheduled care.
The NTPF figures show the increasing demand for care, given our growing and aging population, which means that the number of patients on waiting lists has increased marginally. The figures also show, however, significant reductions in the number of patients waiting longest. There has been a c. 18% reduction in the total number of patients waiting over 12 months since this time last year, and a corresponding reduction of c. 28% in the number waiting over 18 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. 22% reduction in the number of people waiting longer than the Sláintecare targets, equating to over 140,000 people.
There have been significant improvements in the average length of time that patients are waiting, with the waiting time on the OPD list reducing from an average 13.2 months in July 2021 to just over 7 months.
Our acute hospitals are delivering higher levels of activity and treating many more patients. 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 were c. 3.7 million outpatient and c. 1.9 million Inpatient and Day Case 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. 9% for outpatient activity and c. 10% for inpatient and day case activity.
In addition to this planned care, our hospital system also treated c. 1.8 million patients during this same period in emergency care, which represents a c. 7% increase on the full year 2022 and reflects the continuing demands on our hospitals. Despite the many challenges, our hospitals have delivered improvements which are making a real difference to patients. Many individual hospitals have delivered impressive reductions in both their waiting lists and waiting times.
For example, in St. James’s Hospital, the IPDC pain relief waiting list was reduced by c. 40% this year and an additional 181 patients were seen to the end of July. In Sligo University Hospital, the OPD endocrinology waiting list improved by c. 53% in the same period, and 195 extra patients were seen. In Cork University Hospital, an additional 397 patients were seen on the OPD respiratory medicine waiting list which was reduced by c. 42% to the end of July.
However, while we have seen improvements in waiting times and in the level of activity being delivered, increased demand and higher than anticipated levels of additions to waiting lists have resulted in the volume of patients waiting across lists remaining too high. At the end of August, there were 712,821 people on the total acute hospital waiting lists, which represents an increase of <1% In the last year.
There has been c. 168k removals from and c. 169k additions to the waiting list in August. The volume of increased additions was identified as a risk as part of Waiting List Action Plan (WLAP) 2024, and although the projections for this year considered the experience in previous years, it was acknowledged that uncertainty remained. However, whilst having an impact on the volume of people on our waiting lists, growth in the number of referrals to our hospital system has a positive aspect in that it is indicative of people accessing the services that they need, an increased awareness of services as well as expansion of services.
