The Private Hospitals Association has called for a summit with the Department of Health, the HSE and CEO’s of Ireland’s public hospitals in a bid to find new solutions to drive down waiting lists, following confirmation this evening that the number of people waiting to be treated in a hospital or to be seen by a consultant has reached a record high of 718,000.
The Chairman of the Private Hospitals Association Michael Cullen, said its members have additional capacity to help reverse the growing national waiting list figures and that further increased funding of the NTPF should now be a key priority in upcoming Budget 2019.
“While we welcome a further decrease in the monthly inpatient and day procedure figures, we are regrettably seeing the opposite trend in relation to outpatient waiting lists which are again increasing and now stand at over 514,000. It is regrettable that we are still awaiting a promised outpatient waiting list action plan which the Minister said in April would be delivered ‘shortly.”
“Our network of 17 private hospitals located throughout the country can provide all of the key treatment specialties which constantly dominate the monthly waiting lists. While the NTPF is now helping to address this problem and is utilising the capacity of private hospitals nationwide more can always be done. The government needs to make further exchequer monies available and make a multi-annual funding commitment to the NTPF initiative,” concluded Mr Cullen.