South Down MLA Karen McKevitt (SDLP) has called for urgent action to address spiralling hospital surgery waiting times in the Southern Health and Social Care Trust area.
Mrs McKevitt was speaking after correspondence with health officials revealed a waiting time of over one year for some inpatient/daycase surgeries.
She said: “I was shocked to hear from the Southern Trust that surgery waiting times continue to spiral and that some patients are left to wait over a year for treatment.
“That situation is completely untenable and reflects the very serious difficulties facing our Health and Social Care system here. The SDLP has warned that the Transforming Your Care agenda, which was supposed to take pressure off the clinical environment and shift focus onto community based care, is underfunded and has no monitoring mechanism. The chaos at the centre of the overarching plan for the Health Service is clearly impacting on patient outcomes.
“I want to welcome that the Trust has prioritised cancer treatment and consultant-identified acute surgery. These cases rightly deserve urgent attention but overall waiting times need improvement.
“I will be speaking to my colleague and SDLP Health spokesperson Fearghal McKinney about this as a matter of urgency. I also intend to ask the Minister what action he is taking to address the situation. People in need of medical or social care here should not have to wait months or years for treatment. I will continue to press for action.”
Correspondence to Mrs McKevitt from the Southern Health and Social Care Trust indicate that:
“… the current outpatient routine waiting time for general surgery is up to 28 weeks for routine referrals. In outpatients there is more demand than capacity and whilst the commissioner has provided investment into general surgery in 14/15, a residual capacity gap remains in general surgery and this wait time has continued to increase in year.
“The current wait for inpatient/daycase surgery is up to 58 weeks for the longest waits; this wait has increased recently as the Trust continues to focus on ensuring those patients referred with cancer diagnoses or surgeries which have been classified by the consultant surgeon as urgent receive priority.”
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