Last year almost 40,000 patients did not attend appointments or notify the hospitals in the Galway and Roscommon University Hospital Group that they could not attend in advance. This cost the hospital group over €3 million in lost time preparing for appointments for patients who did not turn up.
According to the HSE one of the main priorities of the hospital group this year is to radically reduce the length of time that patients wait for an outpatient appointment. The Special Delivery Unit has set a target that no patient should wait longer than 12 months for an outpatient appointment with a November deadline set out to meet this target.
The issue was raised by Galway Fianna Fáil councillor Mary Hoade at Tuesday’s HSE West Regional Forum meeting in Merlin Park. Cllr Hoade asked what progress was being made in relation to the outpatient waiting list and asked the board to inform patients of the importance of cancelling appointments in advance if they are not accepting them.
According to Mr Bill Maher, CEO of the hospital group, at the start of 2013 there were 43,567 patients on the outpatient department waiting list who needed to be seen before the end of November this year in order to meet the target that no patient would be waiting longer than 12 months and by the end of May this number had reduced to 20,080.
“This year the group embarked on a major project to change the way outpatient services are managed from the way appointments are assigned to the delivery of the actual service. This work started at the end of last year with an extensive validation exercise. This is now complete and we have verified details of how many patients are waiting for each outpatient clinic and how long they have been waiting. We are arranging appointments for those who have been waiting longest, first,” said Mr Maher.
He added that all the hospitals in the Galway and Roscommon University Hospitals Group were working hard to provide appointments on dates that suited patients, which in turn should mean that there will be fewer ‘no shows’ which put an unnecessary burden on the hospitals.
Patients are notified of appointments by letter providing six weeks notice, and if urgent, some patients are contacted by phone and a confirmation letter is sent. Anyone who has provided a mobile phone number also receives a text reminder seven days prior to their appointment, the meeting was informed.
“All patients are advised to notify the hospital if they are unable to attend their appointment and there is a dedicated telephone number available for patients to call to rearrange outpatient appointments. If patients are unable to attend and take the time to notify us in advance it means that we can reschedule their appointment and also offer the original appointment time to another patient,” explained the CEO.
