‘15 years to clear waiting list backlog’ if budget doesn’t give resources to deliver hospital care

AS more than than 85,000 people wait for hospital care in Cork, the Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA) has said that if Budget 2023 does not provide sufficient resources and deliver them in full, it could take some 15 years to clear the backlog of deferred care.

Publishing analysis yesterday as part of its pre-budget submission, the IHCA highlighted that there are more than 907,000 people on some form of hospital waiting list across Ireland and more than 880 permanent hospital consultant posts are not filled as needed.

The IHCA said there are 15,000 patients waiting longer than a year for inpatient or day case treatment and 127,500 people waiting longer than 18 months for an outpatient appointment.

In Cork, more than 85,000 people were on hospital waiting lists at the end of last month, according to the latest National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) figures.

Nationally, as of July 28, there were 71,669 people on the adult inpatient/day case waiting lists — 6,415 of whom were waiting for treatment in Cork hospitals.

On the child inpatient/day case waiting lists, there were a total of 7,919 children waiting nationally. Of these, 413 children were waiting for treatment at Cork hospitals.

There were 540,904 people on the adult outpatient waiting lists nationally — 69,899 of whom were waiting for treatment in Cork hospitals. On the child outpatient waiting lists, there were 86,952 children waiting nationally — 8,942 of whom were waiting for treatment at Cork hospitals.

Speaking about the need to tackle these lists, IHCA president Professor Alan Irvine said that when care is deferred, care is denied.

“You will get misdiagnoses, you will get people presenting with more advanced illnesses that require more resources to treat them and have worse outcomes. That’s a really simple way to put it.

“If you have close to a million people waiting for care a lot of those people will have either significant illnesses that lead to pain and discomfort and lessen their quality of life over a long time or they’ll have time-critical illnesses like cancers that can be picked up more easily and have better outcomes if they’re dealt with quickly and definitively,” he said.

On beds, the IHCA said that promises to add an additional 1,146 beds by the end of last year have also fallen short, with an estimated 316 of these beds yet to materialise.

Only 830 of 1,146 inpatient beds promised by the end of 2021 have been delivered to date and 5,170 additional beds are still required by 2030.

Speaking about the €350m 2022 Waiting List Action Plan, a programme to stabilise and reduce waiting lists and waiting times for elective care in Ireland announced by Health Minister Stephen Donnelly earlier this year, IHCA vice-president Professor Robert Landers said it is “unsustainable”.

“It is a very quick fix and a small indent on a huge problem.

“It’s not sustainable because you’re depending on the goodwill of consultants and other healthcare professionals to work extra hours and work weekends to address those lists, you’re depending on capacity in the private sector which is becoming limited.

“So, there is no sustainable solution identifiable. The only sustainable solution is to put in the beds in the first palace and to staff those beds with the adequate number of consultants needed.”

Prof Irvine said the IHCA’s ask of the Government for Budget 2023 is simple: “Give us the essential resources, the capacity and the consultants to treat our patients on time.”

He said a year’s worth of time and momentum has been lost, resulting in worsening patient waiting times.

“We know what the problems are, and we know what is required to fix them — we can indeed fix them. But we need the beds and the consultants to treat the patients in a timely manner. There is nothing new here. We all know what is necessary,” he said.