There are 16,494 people waiting on outpatient appointments at Letterkenny University Hospital, it has been revealed.
Nationally, the Irish Independent reports that 617,448 people are on waiting lists, with LUH placing 13th on the list of hospitals worst-affected by delays.
Letterkenny University Hospital also recorded Ireland’s second highest rate of overcrowding in January 2022. Some 817 patients had to wait on trolleys at the Emergency Department throughout the month. The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation has said that “we cannot allow chronic overcrowding to become the norm once again in our hospitals.”
The issue of waiting lists was discussed in the Dáil this week, with Sinn Fein TD David Cullinane saying: “The current health system is not delivering for many; it is certainly not delivering for the 900,000 people on waiting lists, the people who are on hospital trolleys every day, the children waiting for access to child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, or those with scoliosis and spina bifida who are waiting for life-changing operations for which funding is not being made available.”
“I hope we have learned lessons and that if anything comes from this pandemic, it will be that the solidarity the public showed will be met with solidarity from this House and that we build a better health service and a better society for the people of this country.”
