Minister confident waiting times will improve

Health Minister Michael McGimpsey has said that health and social care staff must continue to focus their efforts to reduce hospital waiting times.

The Minister was speaking as validated figures were published which showed that the number of patients waiting over nine weeks for a first outpatient appointment had increased from 1,114 in June 2009 to 4,559 in September. The figures also showed that, at the end of September, there were 2,975 patients waiting longer than 13 weeks for surgery, compared to 1,117 in the previous quarter.

Health Minister Michael McGimpsey said: "While I am disappointed at the rise in waiting times, I must emphasise that excellent progress has been made since 2005. Hospital waiting times today are unrecognisable from the long waits endured by patients only a few years ago. The vast majority of patients continue to receive their care and treatment within a reasonable period."

The Minister also said that in order to ensure that the cost of protecting the Northern Ireland public from Swine Flu could be met from the existing Health and Social Care budget, Trusts had to suspend waiting list work during the Summer until the Department got clarity on its budget.

He continued: "Following the confirmation by the Executive of funds of £32million to meet half the £64million cost in late September, waiting list work has restarted. I know that all staff are committed to ensuring patients have rapid access to high quality treatment and will make every effort to recover the ground lost during this time by the end of the year.

"However, I must emphasise that the health and social care service is currently under severe strain trying to respond to significant increases in demand for services within the limited funding available. In the last year alone, there has been an increase of 8% in demand just for elective care services, yet our funding has only increased by 0.5% in real terms, the lowest rise in living memory."

Putting this into context, the Minister said the increase in demand in the first six months of 2009-10 was equal to an additional 35,000 first outpatient appointments and 9,000 more inpatient and daycase procedures.

He continued: "The number of hospital staff has not, however, increased and instead staff have been stretching themselves to the limit to meet this growing demand. I thank them for their efforts. However, I still expect trusts to ensure that my targets are met for 2009-10.

"I realise that this will be extremely challenging considering the very difficult financial situation we are facing."

Concluding the Minister said: "My Department must achieve efficiencies of some £700million over three years. This is not an easy task, especially when we take account of the massive £600million gap in funding that already exists between Northern Ireland and our counterparts in England. This gap will only widen further if health is not given the priority it deserves and needs.

"I recognise that all trusts face major challenges in achieving financial balance, delivering performance targets and providing safe, high quality services, within a very limited resource. I thank all staff across the Health and Social Care service for their continued work in providing high quality services to patients against a background of ever increasing demand and I am confident that waiting time performance will improve in the coming months."

Notes to editors:

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2. This information was collated by Hospital Information Branch, DHSSPS. Further information is available from:

Hospital Information Branch,
Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety,
Annexe 2, Castle Buildings,
Stormont, BT4 3SQ
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