Update on the Galway and Roscommon University Hospitals Group at the Regional Health Forum

 
Bill Maher, CEO of the Galway and Roscommon University Hospitals Group and Tony Canavan, Chief Operating Officer attended the Regional Health Forum Area West meeting in Galway today. Tony Canavan read a statement* with an update following the publication of the HSE National Incident Management Team report on 13 June.
 
Other topics covered during the meeting included the outpatient waiting list.
 
Outpatient Waiting List
One of the main priorities for the Hospital Group in 2013 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; this target has to be met by the end of November.
 
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.
 
At the beginning of the year there were 43,567 patients on the OPD waiting list who needed to be seen before the end of November in order to meet the target that no patient will wait longer than 12 months for an appointment; by the end of May this number had reduced to 20,080.
 
All the hospitals in the Galway and Roscommon University Hospitals Group are working hard to provide appointments on dates that suit patients which in turn will mean that there should be fewer ‘no shows’ which put an unnecessary burden on the hospitals. Last year, across the hospital group, 38,341 patients did not go to their appointments or tell us in advance. This cost the hospital group €3,067,280 in lost time preparing for appointments for patients who did not turn up.
 
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.
 
We hope that with improved communication we will be able to increase the number of appointments slots which are filled and will mean that we can reduce the length of time that patients wait for an appointment.