Hospital waiting times a challenge within budget constraints - McGimpsey

Health Minister Michael McGimpsey said that meeting hospital waiting time targets continues to pose a real challenge in the face of difficult financial circumstances.

The Minister was speaking as validated figures were published which showed that, at the end of March 2010, the number of patients waiting over nine weeks for a first outpatient appointment was 8,581. This represents an improvement on the previous quarter, when the figure was 15,715.

The figures also showed that, at the end of March 2010, there were 3,289 patients waiting longer than 13 weeks for surgery, compared to 6,010 in the previous quarter.

The Minister urged health and social care staff to continue to focus their efforts on reducing hospital waiting times. He said: "I am encouraged by the improvement in performance in the last three months, but it is disappointing nonetheless that a significant number of patients were waiting longer than the maximum waiting times at the end of March 2010.

“It is important to note that demand for our services continues to increase. In just one year, there have been an extra 51,000 outpatient referrals, 19,000 additional procedures and operations and 6,000 extra emergency hospital admissions.

“Waiting times remain a key priority and within my current budget I will continue to make funding available to support the delivery of waiting time targets in 2010/11. I expect that most patients will continue to be seen within the 9 and 13 week timescales set, although I recognise that this may not be possible in all specialties.”

The Minister 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 independent sector work during the summer of 2009 until the Department had clarity on its budget.

He said: "Following the confirmation by the Executive of my budget in late September last year, waiting list work was able to resume. This has helped to ensure an improvement on waiting times.”

The Minister continued: “These waiting time statistics highlight the challenge health and social care staff face in trying to meet ever increasing demand for services, without the funding to match. I thank them for their efforts, despite working under very difficult circumstances, and ask for their continued support as we continue to build HSC capacity for this important work.

“I have done everything possible to protect and sustain services and staff and to ensure that patients do not suffer. I will urge the Executive to ensure that our health service does not face further cuts.”

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