More than 5,000 adults in Cork and Kerry on dietitian waiting list

More than 5,000 adults in the Cork and Kerry region are waiting on a first appointment with a HSE dietitian.

Figures provided in response to a query from The Echo show these patients could be waiting for between four and 174 weeks to be seen.

Cork Kerry Community Healthcare (CKCH), figures show there are 5,243 adults on the waiting list for a first appointment. This figure includes those who access the service via the primary care centres and the Integrated Care Programme for Chronic Disease.

The response from CKCH further discloses that while there are 29 dietitians available for work within the service, there are 38.5 vacancies across the Cork and Kerry region.

Regret

Cork Kerry Community Healthcare said that it “sincerely regret[s] the waiting times for dietetics” and is “working hard to reduce this”.

Jennifer Feighan, CEO of the Irish Nutrition and Dietetic Institute, the professional body representing dieticians and nutritionists, said the moratorium on HSE recruitment is still very much ‘in situ’, even though it was ended last year. She said that has had an ongoing impact on the recruitment of dietitians.

“We did a survey of our members in 2023, and we had 500 vacancies across the profession at that time,” said Ms Feighan.

“Given that there are only 1,400 dietitians registered to work and there are 900 working for the HSE, the fact that we had that significant level of vacancies in 2023 and the moratorium came into place in December 2023 and was based on the numbers on December 30, that really caused us a problem, because we had a high number of vacancies, and then a lot of posts just disappeared overnight.

“The HSE has not quantified the number of posts and the areas in which they went under the Pay and Numbers strategy, they don’t know where they are. If you’re experiencing high levels of waiting times in Cork/Kerry, that’s a clear indication that a lot of posts went there.”

Ms Feighan said the variation on waiting times, between four and 174 weeks, depended on how patients were triaged, and the wait for an appointment would depend on how unwell they were.

Response

In its response to the query from The Echo, Cork Kerry Community Healthcare said that the service was “facing challenges in providing timely access to dietetics in both primary care and ICPCD, due to both a very significant increase in the number of referrals, as well as staffing challenges”.

“We sincerely regret the waiting times for dietetics, and we are working hard to reduce this,” it added.

“We accept the impact on people waiting for appointments and this is not the level of service which we wish to provide.

“The senior leadership team is reviewing all vacant posts with a particular focus on services which have long waiting times.

“A number of posts have been approved for filling, and will be progressed by way of national HSE panels.

“If necessary, where posts are not filled from these panels, local recruitment will take place.”

Question

Cork North Central TD Colm Burke described the number of vacancies for dietitians in comparison to the number working in the Cork/Kerry region as “quite high” and asked what was being done to address this question and whether issues such as terms and conditions were being examined as a possible cause.

“I will be doing everything possible to see what can be done in the meantime to get that waiting list down — it means recruiting additional staff, there’s no other way we can do it,” he said.