Much concern has been raised recently on how Artificial Intelligence (AI) may pose a threat to humanity. Of course there are genuine concerns with this new technology. But what about the positive impact it may have on our healthcare? AI has the potential to transform the work of doctors, nurses and hospitals and help patients…

Beds, beds, beds – it’s not rocket science. One of the big reasons why Ireland has such long hospital waiting lists, is a basic shortage of hospital beds. Now we have the proof, in a new study from the Economic Social & Research Institute. It says that there may be a bed capacity shortfall of…

Ireland has published the first examination of the factors affecting patients getting onto public hospital waiting lists and getting off waiting lists. It says that the public hospital system here prioritises access to specialised care, based on need and not on ability to pay and because of this, waiting lists exist. Not surprisingly, waiting lists…

It’s a bad start to the year on national public hospital waiting lists. As predicted here recently, the crazy hospital overcrowding in December and January plus some other factors like a bad flu season, took a lot of beds out of the system that would otherwise have been available for planned operations. The new waiting…

The Irish health service has missed its target to cut waiting lists by 18% last year. The HSE only managed to reduce waiting lists by 4% so it was way off target. That’s despite a €350 m waiting list plan. The latest national public hospital waiting lists show there were over 812,000 people waiting for…

Public hospital waiting lists look set to take a big hit over the coming weeks in Ireland, with record hospital overcrowding recorded. On Tuesday January 3 last, there were 931 patients on trolleys in hospital emergency departments or on wards, waiting to be admitted to a bed. The previous highest record was 760 patients on…

A major report on the Irish health system has been published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). It has a fascinating chapter on waiting lists here. It says that waiting list measures, based on the number of patients registered at a certain point in time may be unreliable gauges of pressures on…

There was a little bit of good news for people on public hospital waiting lists this week it seems. RTE News reported on an internal briefing paper from the Department of Health it got its hands on. The document said that while overall hospital waiting list numbers have remained broadly constant, year to date long…

That is the common reply, when many politicians ask about who may be the next Minister for Health. The portfolio is seen as a nightmare, potentially career ending and infamously once likened by the former Health Minister Brian Cowen to Angola, full of unexploded landmines ! There will be a Cabinet reshuffle in December and…

There is a little bit of good news on hospital waiting lists. New figures show that the national total fell by 11,200 patients last month. However, that’s the best of it because there are still over 841,000 patients waiting for treatment, or to be seen at an outpatient clinic for the first time to be…