Tag Archives: hospital waiting lists

  NEW measures are needed to attract more consultants and nurses in acute hospitals to reduce the high numbers of patients on in-patient and out-patient appointments in the Mid-West. That’s according to former HSE West Forum chairman, Councillor Tom McNamara, who described the latest figures from the National Treatment Purchase Fund for the Mid-West as “totally unacceptable”. With an estimated 30% of consultant posts in the UL Hospitals’ Group vacant, Councillor McNamara claimed there aren’t enough medical staff to open a second operating theatre at weekends. The Kilmaley Councillor called on Health Minister Simon Harris to introduce a new incentive to defray the cost of training for new nurses on the basis they commit to working for at least three years in the public health service to address the nursing shortage. According to figures released by the National Purchase Treatment Fund (NPTF),  the total number of in-patients waiting for treatment in the UL Hospitals’ Group increased from 5,533 last January …

THE Mayor of Clare has expressed fears that Mid-West outpatient and in-patient waiting lists will increase even further, as a result of the recent overcrowding in local acute hospitals. The UL Hospitals Group has been forced to cancel surgery at University Hospital Limerick (UHL) as a short-term measure to free up beds to deal with overcrowding in the emergency department (ED). Councillor Tom McNamara believes out-patient and in-patient waiting lists will “get worse before they get better”, following the recent widescale cancellations of surgical procedures. “We are talking about the need to tackle waiting lists but nothing is happening. We have become desensitised to seeing thousands of patients on waiting lists. It is unacceptable to have more than 32,000 patients on a waiting list in the Mid-West,” he said. Councillor McNamara has called on the HSE to make people aware of the criteria of the Cross Border Initiative, as a means of tackling large in-patient and out-patient lists in the …