Waiting list for basic health services exceeds 127,000
More than 127,000 people are on waiting lists for basic health services such as physiotherapy and eye tests, with more than 18,000 left waiting for over a year.
Getting an appointment can depend on geography more than need, as patients in some areas are called relatively quickly, while others living elsewhere face lengthy queues.
The largest waiting list in the country is for speech and language services, with 38,424 people awaiting appointments, 16,126 of them for an initial assessment, 7,732 for therapy, and 14,566 for further therapy.
Each of the 32 local health offices under which services are clustered has sizeable waiting lists but they are particularly acute in certain areas.
The South Lee area of Cork, for example, has 68 people waiting more than two years for initial speech and language assessment, while Dublin South West has 116 and Donegal 55.
Physiotherapy has the next-biggest waiting list, with 35,192 people waiting for an assessment of their needs, 2,200 of them for more than a year, but Waterford stands out with 547 people waiting more than a year.
Some 17,515 people are waiting for ophthalmology services, 6,361 for over a year.
The worst areas are Dublin North Central with 2,389 waiting; North Lee (Cork) 1,414, and Kerry 633. Audiology has a waiting list of 16,193, of which 2,084 are waiting more than a year.
Wexford is the worst-affected with 544 waiting over a year.
Just 3,383 people are on the podiatry waiting list but the service can’t keep up here either and Kerry has 275 people waiting more than a year; Meath 204, and Sligo Leitrim 183.
Some 14,963 are waiting to see a dietitian, 3,222 of them for more than a year, with the highest number being in Limerick with 449.
The details were supplied by the HSE to Fianna Fáil’s Stephen Donnelly in response to a parliamentary question.
John Brassil, the party’s spokesperson on primary care, said the figures showed up major deficits in the primary care sector and said people were at risk of developing long-term disabilities, sight-loss, and hearing impairment because they could not access appropriate care.
“The Government promised a decisive shift to primary care three years ago. However, just €4.5m was being allocated for new developments in primary care in the 2019 HSE Service Plan,” he said.
He said that as a percentage of the HSE budget, the amount spent on primary care was falling.
“This will make it much harder to address the long waiting times that have become commonplace for community health services,” he said.
The HSE pointed out that the waiting lists were in the context of some 576,509 attendances at the services highlighted in 2018.
For example, while 38,424 people were awaiting speech and language services, 276,343 appointments were attended.
“The HSE is committed to the delivery of efficient quality services,” it said.
