Local Councillor, Charlie O’Connor, has called for effective action to be taken to deal with what he sees as the unacceptable waiting list for outpatient appointments at Tallaght University Hospital. He raised the matter at the monthly meeting of the Regional Health Forum Dublin Mid-Leinster of which he is a former Chairman. Charlie O’Connor stressed the concern of many with regard to waiting lists at his local hospital and asked for an update on actions being taken in respect of the matter. He received the following response from the Chief Executive of the Dublin Midlands Hospital Group: “The Hospital continues to develop initiatives and to work with the National Treatment Purchase Fund to reduce outpatient and inpatient waiting lists, in the face of an increased referral rate. The Hospital have introduced GP led Clinics and ring-fenced elective surgical beds since the second quarter of 2018. These and our ongoing collaboration with the NTPF contributed to a decrease in inpatient and day case waiting lists in 2018, with inpatient waiting lists numbers at their lowest level in over two years. This trend has continued into 2019.
The Hospital also instigated a number of other initiatives in the last year, which when fully implemented will have a positive impact on reducing our waiting list. These include Headache clinics in Neurology, Physiotherapy lead clinics in Gynaecology and additional clinics funded through the NTPF. Hospital staff provide state-of-the-art care and treatment ranging from prevention to acute care to chronic care and rehabilitation in a year when we had over 468,000 patient attendances/admissions. Staff were also constantly innovating to improve patient care, quality and safety and introducing efficiencies to manage waiting lists with resources allocated to the Hospital.”
According to Charlie O’Connor, further assurances are required in the matter and he said that despite the report presented to him, there is still a serious problem with waiting lists at Tallaght University Hospital. He added that he continues to receive many calls from the community in respect of the matter and he intends to raise the issue once again at the September meeting of the Regional Health Forum.
