Nearly 13,000 people in Western Trust area waiting over a year for admission for treatment

This increase has also occurred in the Western Health and Social Care Trust area although the increase here, 4.2 per cent, is less than the 10.44 rise in Northern Ireland as a whole.

Trust Waiting Times as of March 31. Source: Department of Health NI.

Moreover, figures for the Western Health and Social Care Trust show that there has been some decrease in the number of patients waiting over a year for admission for inpatient or day case treatment.

As it stands there are currently 122,820 people across Northern Ireland who are waiting for inpatient or day case treatments. Data from the DOH shows that this number has increased by 10.44 per cent since last year when there were 111,209 patients waiting.

Looking to localised figures, the Western Trust had 23,855 patients waiting to be admitted to hospital, this number has increased by 4.2 per cent when compared to the March 2021 figure of 22,849 patients.

The breakdown of the Western Turst figure is 2,888 patients (12.1 per cent) are waiting between zero and six weeks; 1,944 (8.1 per cent) of patients are waiting between six and 12 weeks; 1,781 patients (7.5 per cent) are waiting between 13 and 21 weeks; 919 patients (3.9 per cent) are waiting between 21 and 26 weeks; 3,633 patients (15.2 per cent) are waiting between 26 and 52 weeks and 12,690 (53.2 per cent) patients are waiting over 52 weeks for admission for inpatient or day case procedure in the Western Trust.

The DOH has set a target where 55 per cent of patients should not wait more than 13 weeks for inpatient or day case treatment, no health trust in Northern Ireland achieved this target.

Across all of Northern Ireland 81.5 per cent of patients waited longer than 13 weeks. In the Western Trust, 79.7 per cent of inpatients waited longer than 13 weeks for inpatient treatment.

One of the key targets set by DOH is that no patients should be waiting more than 52 weeks (one year) for inpatient or day case admission for treatment.

The data set reveals that this was not achieved by any of the NI Health Trusts and 69,831 patients were waiting over a year for inpatient admission.

The data found that 53.2 per cent of all Western Trust patients waiting for admission were waiting over a year for inpatient or day case treatment, this equates to 12,690 people.

Comparing the data to the same quarter in 2021 we can see that 13,623 patients were waiting over a year to receive inpatient or day case admission which is a decrease of 6.84 per cent.