Health Minister announces initiatives to tackle hospital waiting lists

The announcement came as part of a range of initiatives announced to treat more patients on hospital waiting lists.

Omagh Hospital Day Procedure Centre will see seven regional theatre lists per week across urology and general surgery – two specialities with some of the longest waits across the HSC. 

This means an extra 1,750 patients across these specialities will be treated per year when fully implemented. In addition 10 regional endoscopy sessions at Omagh Hospital will see an extra 3,000 patients per year.

The Minister also confirmed that, despite ongoing budgetary uncertainty, he has been able to allocate £46million for additional waiting list activity for the first six months of 2022/23.

This is in addition to the £90million he allocated last year that delivered over 216,000 patient contacts by the end of February. This included 35,000 new outpatient appointments, 120,000 diagnostic appointments and 13,000 in-patient day case treatment.

The additional funding for the start of 2022/23 involves creating additional in-house health service capacity over and above normal day to day work, as well as paying independent sector providers to assess and treat patients who are on waiting lists.

Minister Swann also announced additional recurrent investment of over £16million per year on boosting in-house health service capacity to treat patients.

Fermanagh and South Tyrone MLA Tom Elliott has welcomed the Department of Health announcement of Elective Surgery at Omagh hospital. The creation of seven additional regional theatre lists per week across urology and general surgery. With 10 extra regional endoscopy sessions at Omagh Hospital. 

Mr. Elliott said: “I welcome Minister Swann’s statement on the announcement that the Department has established further Elective Surgery at Omagh hospital. The extra capacity created will have a profound effect on our waiting lists for many across the Western Trust and Omagh will play a key role in tackling our waiting lists”. 

“It is good that the superb facilities at the Omagh hospital will be at the centre of the Department plan to tackle waiting lists.”

“I trust this will be welcome news to many members of the public who are waiting for such surgeries and treatments, some in great discomfort and pain.” 

“I thank the Minister for this initiative and hope that it will lead to a long-term development of Elective Surgery based at Omagh hospital, this will result in massive boost to our health service provision in the West and in Northern Ireland.”

Minister Swann's update came in a Written Assembly Statement, with the Minister warning that his funding allocations are “not without risk” in the absence of a budget. Funding pressures in health may be significant by the second half of 2022/23 and the financial situation will be constrained whatever the final budget settlement, he emphasised.

“Nevertheless, as long as I am Health Minister I will have a relentless drive on bringing down waiting times. I will continue to put patients at the heart of my decision making and continue to do the best I can to deliver for them with the resources I have available,” he stated.

The Minister said there is “so much more to be done” but he is confident these newly announced initiatives “will make a difference”

He also underlined the scale of the “Herculean task” in tackling waiting times, stating:

“The realistic outlook for our overall waiting times position is a period of slowing growth before ultimately a sustained reversal as the decisions already taken on staffing and other investments in capacity begin to come to fruition.

“Alongside the investment in buying additional capacity, we need to strengthen in house capacity on a major scale – to meet current and future needs.”

Buying treatments for patients from the independent sector helps reduce the capacity gap between demand for care and the health service’s current ability to meet it. The longer-term solution, as set out in the Elective Care Strategy published by the Minister in 2021, is to significantly grow health service capacity.

“I am pleased to be able to announce today the creation of Omagh Hospital as Northern Ireland’s second regional Day Procedure Centre” Minister Swann stated.

The Written Ministerial Statement also detailed ongoing initiatives under the Elective Care Strategy. These include mega-clinics across a number of specialities with 600 patients treated already this financial year, in addition to the 6,240 patients treated last year at these clinics.

“The new ways of providing services means that between September 2021 and May 2022 we have been able to reduce the waits for urgent scoliosis patients from 43 weeks to 4 weeks, and for routine scoliosis referrals from 115 weeks to 67 weeks with times continuing to reduce.” he stated.

“We have also treated approximately 3,000 patients at the Regional Day Procedure Centre at Lagan Valley Hospital and approximately 5,000 patients have received endoscopy procedures at the centre. This is additional regional capacity to help reduce long waits.

“Members will already be aware of a range of other initiatives in place such as a private Independent Sector provider using vacant theatres in the South West Acute Hospital in Enniskillen which has already to treated hundreds of patients on waiting lists for hip replacement surgery.

“Over the last few months there has also been an upturn in orthopaedic surgery, which has allowed increased capacity to treat those who are waiting  for new joints and other orthopaedic procedures.

“Our cancer screening programmes have significantly increased activity and both bowel and breast cancer screening is now above pre-pandemic levels, with bowel screening activity during 2021/22 at 124 per cent of 2019/20 activity and the number of women invited for cancer screening in 2021/22 at 113 per cent compared with 2019/20.”