UHW has 5,000 people over 18 months on waiting lists
University Hospital Waterford. Photo by Joe Evans.
More than 5,000 have been waiting more than 18 months for appointments at University Hospital Waterford, the latest figures from The National Treatment Purchase Fund show.
Just over 75% of people are being seen within a year, but 10,788 people are currently on waiting lists for longer than a year. A total of 5,116 people have been on waiting lists for more than 18 months.
The waiting list for in-patient care is far smaller, with 456 left waiting for an appointment, but 14% of those patients are waiting more than 18 months.
Of the 4,818 people waiting for day-patient appointments, 1,197 people have been waiting more than a year and 808 have been waiting more than 18 months.
The Irish Hospital Consultants Association calculated in July 2024 that there was an increase of 328,000 in the number of people waiting for care compared with May 2017 at the launch of Sláintecare.
The figures at the time showed that the national waiting list figure had reached its highest ever at 911,500. The unwanted record surpassed the previous record of 910,000 set in August 2022, according to the IHCA.
Speaking to the Irish Examiner earlier this year, the IHCA vice president Gabrielle Colleran said that lowered Government targets for reducing the numbers “may take a decade or more to get under control unless the opening of long-promised additional hospital capacity is fast-tracked".
The number of people on hospital waiting lists nationally has dropped more than 200,000 since July.
