HEALTH Minister Robin Swann has outlined a range of important initiatives to treat more patients on hospital waiting lists.
These include naming Omagh Hospital as the north's second regional Day Procedure Centre.
The minister confirmed that, despite ongoing budgetary uncertainty, he has been able to allocate £46 million for additional waiting list activity for the first six months of 2022/23.
This is in addition to the £90 million allocated last year.
The additional funding 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.
Mr Swann also announced additional recurrent investment of more than £16 million per year on boosting in-house health service capacity to treat patients.
His 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 said.
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.
"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," he said.
"I am pleased to be able to announce the creation of Omagh Hospital as Northern Ireland’s second regional Day Procedure Centre."
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 regional endoscopy extension at Omagh hospital will further be supported with 20 extra sessions at Lagan Valley Hospital. In total approximately 9,000 extra patients will be seen per year.
These additional sessions will reduce waiting lists with the intention of ultimately eradicating them.
The minister 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.
"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." Mr Swann said.
"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."
