148,000 people are currently on hospital waiting lists in the South/South West area, which includes Tipperary University Hospital.
This shows an increase of 45% over the past seven years.
The Clonmel hospital currently has 435 outpatients who have been waiting over a year and a half to be seen.
This compares to almost 11,000 in Cork’s CUH.
The health sector is in crisis at the moment, with recruitment as a major part of the problem and things are only set to get worse.
In the South/South West area, 30% of consultant posts were not filled in 2021.
The Irish Hospital Consultants Association believes that failing to recruit consultants is restricting patient access to timely and essential medical and surgical care.
Of the 148,000 people waiting on outpatient care, 133,000 of them are waiting to see a consultant.
Hospitals in the South of the country have 38,400 people currently waiting in excess of the waiting list targets set for the end of 2022.
The specialties of Ophthalmology, Orthopaedics, ENT, Pain Relief, Dermatology and Neurosurgery have some of the largest number of people waiting 18 months or longer for assessment by a consultant.
The Government’s Waiting List Action Plan released in February pledges that by the end of this year, 98% of patients will have received the care they need within a year of being put on a waiting list.
However, the hospitals do not believe this is a realistic target.
IHCA President Prof Alan Irvine said: “The severe shortage of hospital consultants in our public health service in Cork and the southern region is the main contributor to the unacceptable delays in providing care to patients.
“These growing waiting lists demonstrate the impact of years of consultant shortages and underinvestment in capacity across public hospitals in the region, which must be addressed in discussions with the IHCA.”
While patients in the region continue to face long wait times, the IHCA has said that the failure to ensure competitiveness in recruiting and retaining consultants and to reconvene critical contract talks with Consultants risks worsening the recruitment and retention crisis in public hospitals.
Of the 23 completed competitions run by the Public Appointments Service that failed to be filled in 2021, 30% (7) were in the South/South-West Hospital Group. These included competitions to appoint badly needed Consultants in Respiratory Medicine, Microbiology and Immunology.
The Association said that talks commenced last September but did not make adequate progress and have been stalled entirely since December, when the Independent Chair stepped down to take up a new role in the High Court. It was expected that a replacement Chair would have been appointed quickly.
However, responding to serious concerns raised in the Oireachtas by Cork North-Central TD, Deputy Colm Burke, at last week’s Joint Committee on Health, Secretary General of the Department of Health, Robert Watt, said that the Department may now not appoint a new Chair – a move which Consultants believe is a significant blow to the process and to tackling the growing vacancy rates and hospital waiting lists.
Commenting, IHCA President Professor Alan Irvine, said: “The severe shortage of hospital Consultants in our public health service in Cork and the southern region is the main contributor to the unacceptable delays in providing care to patients.
“We have a chronic recruitment and retention crisis with 1 in 5 permanent hospital Consultant posts not filled as need – that’s 838 Consultant posts nationally either vacant or filled on a temporary or agency basis.
“This has led to a situation where we have almost 900,000 people on hospital waiting lists – over 148,000 of these people in the South/South-West.
“The revelation by Secretary General Robert Watt last week that the Department may not appoint a new Independent Chair for hospital Consultant contract talks is another significant blow to the process and to tackling the growing vacancy rates and hospital waiting lists.
“The appointment of an Independent Chair by the Minister of Health was agreed when the talks commenced in July 2021. Appointing a replacement was then recommended by the outgoing Chair and has been needed since December last – with no progress made despite repeated calls from Consultant representative bodies.
“Reneging on this agreement at this point will only serve to further undermine any remaining fragments of trust between health service management and healthcare professionals, and will not create the necessary environment for the consideration of any new offer to be proposed by Government.
“Without open, genuine discussions and agreement with hospital Consultant representatives on the requirements for an attractive Consultants’ Contract to be offered in future, we will not be able to stem the exodus of highly trained medical and surgical specialists abroad, leaving public hospital patients without access to the care they need and deserve.”
