Year long wait for Cork patients

More than one in ten Cork people on hospital inpatient lists have been waiting for more than a year for their procedures.

That’s according to Fianna Fáil Cllr Pádraig O’Sullivan following an analysis of the latest waiting list figures from the National Treatment Purchase Fund.

Cllr O’Sullivan said, that at the end of October, there were 4282 people waiting for an inpatient or day case procedure at CUH (1167), Mercy University Hospital (881) and the South Infirmary Victoria University Hospital (2215).

Of these patients, 459 were waiting longer than 12 months for their procedure, representing 10.76 per cent of the total figure in Cork.

In CUH alone, 17 per cent of patients awaiting procedures have been waiting for more than a year.

Cllr O’Sullivan believes that recruiting more doctors and nurses is the only solution to the crisis and has called for immediate action.

“Increasing lists are an all too common trend in health care in Ireland. Things are getting progressively worse,” said the councillor.

“Only last week, we heard of disgraceful reports of elderly people lying on hospital trolleys awaiting admission or just to be seen in our emergency departments,” he added.

According to Cllr O’Sullivan, hospital staff’s hands are being “tied behind their backs” by the Government’s inability to get a handle on the health service.

“Until more doctors, nurses and other clinical staff are employed, Cork people will continue to suffer from wait times that, in any other developed country, would simply not be tolerated,” the by-election candidate concluded.