Hamilton announces another £30m for tackling waiting lists
Health Minister Simon Hamilton has announced a further £30m of additional funding to go directly towards tackling waiting lists. This follows on from the investment of £40m at the end of 2015 and an extra £2m recently announced to assist autism waits. Hamilton also revealed that provisional waiting list times for February 2016 show that the number of people waiting for inpatient and outpatient appointments is falling. The Minister said, “It is unacceptable that people are waiting too long, and dealing with these waiting lists is one of my key priorities. “That is why for the early part of 2016/17 I am allocating a further £30m to continue tackling waiting lists. This additional funding will support up to 25,000 additional assessments and some 12,000 additional treatments across a wide range of specialities including orthopaedics, gastroenterology, neurology and ENT. “Importantly it will see a £10m investment in diagnostic services, building capacity to support up to 50,000 additional tests to help meet increasing demands as well as supporting seven day services,” he continued. “Our Trusts already provide 600,000 inpatient and day case admissions, and 1.5 million consultant-led outpatient attendances each year. But it is clear that it will take time and significant non recurrent and recurrent investment to bring waiting lists back to an acceptable level whilst simultaneously increasing capacity to meet increasing demand.Article continues below:


Both comments and pings are currently closed.