Hospital waiting list will take years to address

A meeting of Regional Health Forum West was told that long waiting times had been exacerbated by restrictions imposed on the healthcare system – almost 13,000 are awaiting either assessment or treatment in the Galway University Hospitals Group made up of UHG and Merlin Park.

And 10,000 of those were awaiting day case procedures, with a further 2,800 requiring inpatient care.

Chief Operations Officer of the Saolta Hospitals Group, Ann Cosgrove, told the meeting that these numbers were as a result of increasing demand and limited capacity – and that orthopaedics had been one area very adversely affected.

“Orthopaedics is one of the specialties across our group – and across the country – with the highest numbers on waiting lists. It will be a challenge to address that over the next number of years. I say years because it will take a number of years.

In response to a question from County Councillor Liam Carroll (FG), it was revealed that 546 children were on the orthopaedic outpatients’ waiting list and only 45 of those had received an appointment – 60 had been on the list for over two years and were yet to be seen by a consultant.

A further 37 children were on the inpatients’ waiting list while over 1,400 adults awaited hospital treatment as an inpatient in Galway hospitals.

Adult outpatients found themselves in a similarly dire situation with almost 6,500 awaiting orthopaedic treatment – just 305 of those had an appointment while 1,220 had been waiting over two years for a visit date.

Read the full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune, on sale in shops now – or you can download the digital edition from www.connachttribune.ie