The HSE is in talks with private hospitals to provide extra capacity in a bid to cut the 900,000-long treatment waiting list.
HSE chief executive Paul Reid said "nobody's proud" of the record waiting list. Additional investment being put in place will result in an extra 150,000 procedures to "make an initial impact" on the list, while developing of a much longer multi-annual plan will be finalised "in the coming weeks".
“It is about incremental investments across both out-patient, in-patient and day cases,” he added.
Speaking on RTÉ’s This Week programme, he said the number of people with Covid-19 in intensive care had risen 20 per cent in the past week.
He urged those who had not been immunised against Covid-19 to come forward to do so, as two thirds of those in intensive care with Covid are unvaccinated.
“What we have seen over past four days in particular are rising cases, but particularly rising hospitalisation.
“So right now today we’re at 382 people Covid-positive in hospital and 74 in ICU, so that’s up about 20 per cent this day last week.”
He added that 67 per cent of the 74 in intensive care “have not been vaccinated at all, and about 3 per cent have been partially vaccinated”.
Mr Reid said the figures represented “a really very strong call to urge people to get vaccinated.”
‘Higher risk’
“If you are not vaccinated you are at higher risk of hospitalisation. If you are not vaccinated you have higher potential to transmit [the virus] further,” he told the programme.
Mr Reid said work had already begun on rolling out a booster vaccine programme, based on current recommendations from the National Immunisation Advisory Committee (NIAC).
People who are immunocompromised, the over-65s in long term residential care facilities and the over-80s generally, are being prioritised.
Around a third of those in nursing homes got a booster jab over the last couple of weeks, he said.
Mr Reid said the HSE is awaiting further recommendations from NIAC on the booster programme.
The Department of Health on Sunday reported 1,384 new cases of Covid-19.
The number of patients being treated in hospital was 382 as of 8am, with 74 in ICU.
The number of new cases is a return to the sort of levels seen on a daily basis over the past few weeks and a significant drop on those published on Friday and Saturday, when about 2,000 new cases were reported.
The number of people with Covid-19 being treated in hospital is up 29 on Saturday, while the number in ICU is unchanged over the 24-hour period, but up by almost a quarter – from 60 – in the past week.
In Northern Ireland, there were three more Covid-19-linked deaths reported today, bringing the total death toll since the start of the pandemic to 2,588.
There were a further 1,115 people who tested positive for the virus, with the total of confirmed cases in the region since the outbreak began rising to 249,821.
Latest figures from Stormont’s Department of Health on Friday showed 360 patients in hospital with Covid-19.
Meanwhile, as concerns intensified about waiting lists surging to 900,000, from 570,000 since 2017, Mr Reid said they were a “very serious systemic legacy issue”, with the numbers also having been affected by the pandemic.
The HSE is working on a long-term multi-annual plan in this regard, he stressed. “But for now, immediately, as we head into the winter, we have a few key tasks – firstly to stop this list growing further, which it has through Covid... secondly to make an initial impact on it, and thirdly to put in place sustainable new ways” of providing care through both the public and private systems.
There will be additional investment “to fund some extra capacity across public hospitals”, he said.
The HSE, he added, is engaging with the private sector, “and procuring some further capacity for them to carry out some activities for us” in terms of reducing waiting lists.
“We are working with the NTPF (National Treatment Purchase Fund) in terms of particularly prioritising the longer waiters,” he said.
Crisis shortage
The HSE had been particularly criticised earlier this week when it emerged that children would be waiting 14 years for consultant appointments, amid a crisis shortage of 750 consultant specialists. Consultant paediatrician Alan Irvine had told a conference that some public hospitals are sending letters to parents offering scans to children in 2035 – a 14- year wait.
Admitting this was “not good” and that “nobody’s proud” of the waiting list, Mr Reid said: “Our focus is two-fold – addressing those who are longest waiting, and putting in extra incremental investment to do this.”
Asked about a Business Post report that less than half the €210 million Access to Care Fund aimed at cutting waiting lists will be used by the end of the year, he said the health service had been stretched hugely by Covid and by the cyberattack earlier in the year, and this “ultimately has impacted all elective care”. But the HSE hoped in the coming budget to retain some of that investment for next year.
On medical staff shortages, he said the HSE is engaged in a significant recruitment campaign for nurses, doctors and consultants.
He said the nursing workforce had increased by some 3,000 last year and another 1,325 this year. Some 1,500 are midwife staff nurses and about 400 are specialists.
All nursing graduates who come out of training are now offered full time permanent positions with the HSE, which aims to recruit 1,000 by the end of this year and 900 next year.
