{"id":236734,"date":"2026-01-09T21:49:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T21:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/236734\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T21:49:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T21:49:07","slug":"health-service-failed-to-meet-goal-of-cutting-hospital-waiting-lists-in-2025-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/236734\/","title":{"rendered":"Health service failed to meet goal of cutting hospital waiting lists in 2025 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ireland<\/a>\u2019s health<\/a> service<\/a> failed to meet its goal of cutting the number of patients on hospital waiting lists for longer than target times to 50 per cent last year, new figures show.<\/p>\n

On Friday, the National Treatment Purchase Fund<\/a> (NTPF) published the latest hospital waiting-list figures for December 2025.<\/p>\n

There were 753,763 patients on a hospital waiting list at the end of the year, the vast majority (611,987) waiting for an outpatient appointment.<\/p>\n

A total of 107,181 patients were waiting for an appointment for their inpatient or day-case treatment and 34,595 patients were waiting to receive an appointment for a GI (gastrointestinal) endoscopy.<\/p>\n

A further 42,033 patients are classified as suspended, meaning they are temporarily unfit or unable to attend due to clinical, personal or social reasons.<\/p>\n

The Government\u2019s waiting-list action plan pledged to have 50 per cent of patients waiting less than Sl\u00e1intecare wait time targets by the end of 2025.<\/p>\n

The 2017 Sl\u00e1intecare report, which was aimed at overhauling the health service, recommended maximum wait times of no more than 12 weeks for an inpatient\/day case procedure or GI scope, and 10 weeks for a new outpatient appointment.<\/p>\n

However, December\u2019s figures show 64 per cent of patients on a hospital waiting list were waiting longer than these target times.<\/p>\n

This was highest among patients waiting for an outpatient appointment, of whom 68.2 per cent, or 417,663, were waiting longer than the target times.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Nearly 100 non-urgent patients found to have cancer by service queried by spending watchdogOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The waiting-list action plan also pledged to increase the proportion of outpatients waiting less than 12 months to 90 per cent by the end of 2025.<\/p>\n

The December figures show the health service was just shy of this goal, with 84 per cent of these patients waiting less than a year.<\/p>\n

In a statement, the Department of Health said there was an increase in waiting-list volumes in the early part of last year due to the winter surge in demand for unscheduled and emergency care, and elevated levels of respiratory illness circulating.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, increases in waiting-list volumes continued through most of 2025, stabilising towards the end of the year with reductions in the total waiting list volumes since October evident,\u201d the department stated.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere have also been improvements in how long patients have been waiting across lists in the same period. Increased outpatient activity will naturally increase referrals to inpatient or day-case waiting lists, and while the number of patients on those lists has increased, the length of time they are waiting has improved.\u201d<\/p>\n

The department said there are \u201csigns of progress\u201d but it will \u201ccontinue to drive improvements in waiting list performance\u201d through engagement with the Health Service Executive and the NTPF.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland\u2019s health service failed to meet its goal of cutting the number of patients on hospital waiting lists…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":236735,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[103,397,1418,396,3267,2120,61,60,45130],"class_list":["post-236734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-health-service-executive-hse","tag-healthcare","tag-hospitals","tag-hse","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-national-treatment-purchase-fund-board"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236734\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}