{"id":653627,"date":"2026-10-13T17:12:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T17:12:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/653627\/"},"modified":"2026-10-13T17:12:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T17:12:13","slug":"more-than-30000-hospital-appointments-cancelled-in-just-over-a-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/653627\/","title":{"rendered":"More than 30,000 hospital appointments cancelled in just over a year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"contextmenu internal_Body1st\">More than 30,000 Cork hospital appointments were cancelled in less than a year and a half, new data has shown.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">Information provided by the HSE shows that between January 1, 2025, and May 15, 2026, a total of 30,572 hospital appointments were cancelled \u2014 an average of more than 60 a day.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">A total of 25,144 of the cancellations were at Cork University Hospital, where 18,470 appointments were cancelled last year, and a further 6,674 in 2026 to mid-May.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">The figures equate to about 1,539 cancellations per month on average, up significantly from the monthly average of 840 in 2023 previously reported by  The Echo.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">It comes as Cork University Hospital\u2019s chief executive, Jennifer Kearney, recently warned in a letter to HSE management that the hospital is <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.echolive.ie\/corknews\/arid-41922787.html\"> short more than 1,000 staff, <\/a>and that it is unsafe to head into winter with such staffing uncertainty.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">Health minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill pushed back on this, insisting CUH meets all required safety standards, has recruited more staff than any other Model 4 hospital this year, and is already operating over budget.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">From the start of 2025 to mid-May this year, there were also 3,431 cancellations at Mercy University Hospital, 1,084 at South Infirmary Victoria University Hospital, and 651 at Bantry General Hospital. Mallow General Hospital had 107, and Cork University Maternity Hospital 65 cancellations.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">South Infirmary Victoria University Hospital had already reached 463 cancellations by May 15, about 75% of its 2025 total.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">A HSE spokesperson said: \u201cHospitals make every effort to minimise cancellations and avoid disruption to patients wherever possible.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">\u201cWhere an appointment does need to be cancelled, hospitals seek to reschedule the patient at the earliest possible opportunity and, where feasible, to the nearest available appointment date.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">Hospitals may need to cancel or reschedule appointments for a range of reasons, including that the consultant or their team was on leave, a patient was treated elsewhere, or was admitted to the hospital as an inpatient thus not requiring the appointment anymore or, on occasion, adverse weather conditions, the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">The spokesperson added: \u201cThe priority is to ensure that patients are kept informed of any changes and that any unavoidable cancellation has the minimum possible impact on their care and waiting time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">The figures were provided to Sinn F\u00e9in TD Thomas Gould, who said: \u201cThis is more than 30,000 cancellations in less than 18 months, but it also, crucially, represents thousands of people waiting for a vital appointment, only to receive a cancellation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">\u201cI have been contacted by people in crippling pain or awaiting potentially life-changing test results who have had their appointments cancelled.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">\u201cThese figures, particularly for CUH, are a sign of hospitals in crisis. They show that the CEO of the CUH is right and the minister is wrong to say otherwise. Every cancellation is concern for a family, stress for a patient, and delayed healthcare.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than 30,000 Cork hospital appointments were cancelled in less than a year and a half, new data&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":653628,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[129137,79,103,397,396,61,60],"class_list":["post-653627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-cuh","tag-cork-news","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653627","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=653627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653627\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/653628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=653627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=653627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=653627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}