Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 15 May 2024
109. Deputy Neasa Hourigan asked the Minister for Health if he will provide, in tabular form, the number of people who were waiting on a diagnostic scan - MRI, CT, VUS, US - in Ireland, in each quarter from 2016 to 2024, respectively. [21928/24]
Amharc ar fhreagraThe HSE advises that a pilot project commenced in 2016 by the HSE Acute Hospitals Division to progress the collection of national radiology waiting list data. The project has been supported by the Radiology Clinical Care Programme and has involved key stakeholders across the system including the National Integrated Medical Imaging System (NIMIS) Team, Hospital Groups, and the support of the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) for data collection and data management expertise.
The information that is currently being collected is presently being tested and validated at hospital, hospital group and national level and as such should not be used/reported without the context of the caveats set out below:
• Data is subject to inclusions and exclusions which are documented in the Data Profile Document. This document is available from Acute Operations and has been circulated to all Hospital Groups.
• Data contains urgent, routine and surveillance/planned activity which is currently not broken down in detail, as such this includes surveillance/planned activity which may not be exceeding planned date.
• Data is still undergoing validation at Hospital and Hospital Group level. Data does not take into account local nuances at site level (Site profile developed to support understanding of same).
• The purpose of this aggregate data is to provide a National Level overview of the number of patients waiting for modalities of CT, MRI and Ultrasound.
• This report is not intended to be used for the active management of hospital diagnostics waiting list, local reports and mechanisms should continue to be used for the management of diagnostics waiting lists at hospital level.
The NTPF provides my Department with Quarterly reports which set out waiting list data for CT, MRI and Ultrasound. The HSE advises that, at present, further diagnostic scans (including cholangiopancreatography, electroencephalogram, angiogram, electrocardiogram and bone scan), are not yet captured as part of this project.
The NTPF has advised my Department that diagnostic reports are available from 2019 onwards. I have provided the Deputy with reports for each quarter in the years 2019 to 2022 in response to Parliamentary Question No. 179 of 25 January 2023. At the following links are diagnostic reports for each Quarter in 2023 and Quarter 1 in 2024.
At the end of Quarter 1 2024, there was a total of 276,004 patients reported on the waiting list from all sites, this represents all outpatients waiting, urgent, semi urgent, routine and planned/surveillance (where diagnostic access is planned at particular time intervals).
To ensure that Deputies have access to these quarterly diagnostic reports as soon as they are available, my Department will put an arrangement in place whereby the reports can be provided to Deputies once they have been received from the NTPF, and will contact the Deputy directly in this regard.
