Average 16 Month Wait Time For Operations At Naas General Hospital, Report Finds

Monday, 15 August 2022 15:46

By Caoimhe Harney

Patient advocates have called for a taskforce to tackle chronic public patient wait times.

Naas out of the 41 hospitals that are ranked, is 13th on the list for wait times, with an average wait time between seeing the consultant and getting an operation of 16 months, according to the Irish Patients Association (IPA).

IPA Co - Founder Stephen McMahon said this was just the weighted average for the hospital, most likely there are people in Kildare who are waiting two or three years, he said.

"Nationally there's over 500,000 people waiting on their first appointment to see a consultant, in Naas that's almost 9,000," he explained.

Patient advocates have called for a taskforce to tackle chronic public patient wait times as figures show thousands of people are waiting up to two years to see a consultant and have surgery.

Figures released by the IPA for July show that patients in Letterkenny, Cork, Galway, Sligo, and Limerick, face the longest waits, with the hospitals in those areas also seeing emergency department overcrowding in the past year.

Mr McMahon said it should not just be about the numbers on the waiting list, speaking on Monday's Kildare Focus, he said it must also be about the length of time people are waiting,“It is a better indicator for the patient’s experience."

Listen back to the full interview here, Irish Patients Association, Co - Founder Stephen McMahon, who spoke with Eoin Beatty on Monday's Kildare Focus: