More than 79,500 Cork patients waiting on hospital treatment

Some 79,514 patients are awaiting treatment at a Cork hospital, including 9,120 children, according to latest figures from the National Treatment Purchase Fund.

This is a reduction of 141 from December, when 79,655 people were awaiting medical treatment in one of six Cork hospitals.

Both inpatient and outpatient waiting lists began to fall in Cork hospitals back in July, and outpatient lists have continued dropping slightly each month since then.

Increasing

However, lists of people waiting for inpatient treatment, usually more major procedures, have been increasing steadily again since October, and are currently the highest they have been since the NTPF started measuring data in 2021.

In total, there are 43,526 people waiting up to 6 months for treatment across the six Cork hospitals, 19,738 waiting 6-12 months, 7,040 waiting 12-18 months, and 9,210 waiting 18 months or more.

There are 4,549 people awaiting inpatient and 33,932 people awaiting outpatient treatment at South Infirmary Victoria University Hospital, a total of 38,481 patients including 3,764 children.

Some 26,284 patients are on the waiting list at Cork University Hospital, of which 4,745 are children.

Of the total, 2,094 people are waiting for an inpatient appointment and 24,190 are waiting for outpatient appointments.

Inpatient

There are 821 patients on the inpatient waiting list and 5,159 on the outpatient list in the Mercy, a total of 5,980, two of them children, while in Mallow General Hospital there are 5,226 people waiting including 559 children — 477 patients are waiting for inpatient treatment there and 4,749 for outpatient treatment.

Finally, Cork University Maternity Hospital has a total of 2,555 people on its waiting list including 50 children, and there are 648 on inpatient lists and 1,907 on outpatient lists, while Bantry General Hospital has 988 people waiting for treatment, 279 for inpatient and 709 for outpatient.

Decrease

The slight decrease in the amount of people waiting in Cork is dramatically at odds with that of the national trend, as overall in Ireland, there are 15,487 more people on waiting lists, as of the end of January than the end of December.

A Department of Health spokesperson said: “The delivery of elective care in the early months of the year can be impacted by the winter surge in demand for unscheduled care and because of high levels of respiratory illness circulating.”