Statement by Simon Nugent, Chief Executive of the Private Hospitals Association Commenting on the latest NTPF waiting list statistics published this afternoon
Friday July 7 2017 Private hospitals have now begun to receive referrals from public hospitals under the treatment purchase scheme and have immediately started treating several hundred patients.
This has slowed the growth of public waiting lists. However, there is still a mountain to climb with 86,000 people on inpatient waiting lists and over 10,000 of them waiting more than 15 months .
Better partnering of public and private hospitals could make much faster headway for the thousands of patients waiting on procedures. This will save money and save the patient as while waiting, it is common for conditions to deteriorate, becoming more costly to address – quite possibly as an emergency admission.
The €5M so far being spent on reducing waiting lists is a drop in the ocean when you consider that the spend on HSE hospitals every year is 1000 times as much at over 5 billion Euros. Now it appears a whole new procurement process will be required before a second €5M can be spent treating another batch of patients in the autumn. This seems unnecessarily bureaucratic if one is really committed to tackling the problem.