What We Do

Audit and Quality Assurance

The NTPF’s Audit and Quality Assurance Team delivers audits on public hospitals, and examines the management of waiting lists and waiting list data.

Audits help assure us, and the public, that hospitals are managing their waiting lists in accordance with national protocols, and that waiting list data, returned to the NTPF for national reporting, is accurate. This helps to ensure fair and timely access to treatment for patients.

Audits promote standardisation of hospital waiting list management practices, and help hospitals to follow best practice in managing their waiting lists to ensure high-quality and accurate waiting list data.

You can find out more about what the audit process involves and make sure your hospital is prepared for audit in our FAQs.

Waiting List Reform

The NTPF improves processes and operational systems for waiting list management through its National Waiting List Management Protocols.

The protocols provide guidance to hospital staff working in scheduled care or waiting list management, to ensure that patients seeking access to hospital care are administratively managed in a safe, timely, fair and equitable manner while waiting.

National Protocols promote clear governance, quality patient information, equity of access, national standardisation, efficiency, and improved wait times for patients.

National Waiting List Reports

The NTPF is the statutory body responsible for publishing National Waiting List Reports. They are published on the second Friday of every month.

The reports are compiled from data received from each public hospital in Ireland, and provide hospital staff with a clear and up-to-date summary of demand for services in their hospital.

The NTPF gathers this data every week, checks it for adherence to our protocols and dataset definitions and stores it in our internal databases.

Every month, the data is published by the NTPF on our interactive dashboard and on downloadable Open-Data files.

Commissioning

The Commissioning Team works with hospitals to help patients to access healthcare faster. We do this by sourcing treatments in the public and private healthcare systems. These treatments are arranged in 20 private hospitals and 39 public hospitals throughout the island of Ireland.

Patient treatments are arranged in conjunction with a patient’s public hospital. The Commissioning Team sources treatments for Inpatient and Day Case procedures, as well as Endoscopy procedures, and Outpatient consultations.

Administrative Validation

We work with hospitals, to send letters to patients on waiting lists, to confirm if they still require access to care.  This process of administrative validation ensures that waiting list data is kept accurate and up to date.