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THERE ARE ALMOST 14,000 children waiting on orthodontic treatments across the country, new figures have revealed.
According to the Department of Health, the waiting list is not structured in terms of first-come-first-served, but is manipulated in terms of who is in need of immediate assistance.
About 462 patients have been waiting for more than four years but up to 5 per cent of these cases are due to necessary waiting times to allow the jaw to develop fully.
Dr Katherine Condren, the President of the Orthodontic Society of Ireland, told TheJournal.ie that the waiting lists are not worse than expected.
“You can only treat so many patients at a time,” she said. “The numbers are in line with the fact that there is a moratorium in place within the HSE.”
The HSE provides orthodontic treatment to those who have been assessed and referred for treatment before their 16th birthday.
“As we know, treatment can go on a long time,” continued Dr Condren. “Particularly in patients with severe issues. Obviously, it is not ideal, we do not want to see children walking around Ireland with crooked teeth and would like to treat them at an opportune time.”
However, she added that the system is effective at prioritising those who need to be treated quickly.
“When I take patients off the list, some of them have only just been placed on it,” she explained. “Others are waiting on that call that never comes. It is not perfect. Teenagers do not want to not look good during those years but from a clinical point of view, there is not the same impetus on being treated.”
Dr Condren, who is a specialist orthodontist practicing in Terenure, said that the lifting of the HSE moratorium on recruitment of both dentists and support staff, including nurses and radiographers, would both improve services and reduce waiting lists.
The message is echoed by the Irish Dental Association.
Iseult Bouarroudj, the newly elected President of the HSE Dental Surgeon group and a leading representative of the body, told a conference yesterday that the current recruitment embargo was having a hugely negative impact.
“Where services have been reduced we have seen an increase in patients presenting with pain and infection, necessitating complex treatment and in certain circumstances, acute hospital admission,” she explained. “Waiting lists for treatment under general anaesthesia, orthodontics and oral surgery have soared due to the lack of resources. This is a reprehensible consequence of the circumstances which now prevails in our public dental service.”
About 350 public service dentists see over 250,000 children every year in Ireland.
Bouarroudj also said that despite the continued efforts of staff to provide the best service, morale in the public dental sector had plummeted.
“We are calling on the Minister for Health to reinstate sufficient numbers of staff in all HSE areas to ensure patients of the public dental service and orthodontic service have access to equitable services, irrespective of geographic location” she said.
Figures released in a response to a parliamentary question showed that the largest waiting lists were in the HSE West region.
Commenting on the figures, junior minister Alex White noted that an independent review of the services had been commissioned.
“The outcome of this review, which is near completion, will give guidance as to what changes will be desirable to provide the best possible model of care delivery, given the current resources available and future demand for services,” he concluded.
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I’m more interested in how much it increased from 2021 to 2022 and more to the point from January 2020 to December 2022 ..
It’s all so backwards. Energy providers are claiming the price increase is due to increased fuel costs, yet they are all reporting massive profit increases during the same period. Price gouging and war profiteering at it’s finest and the Government/Regulators are doing nothing about it.
Does anyone think it will ever go back down in price again?
@David Mc Cabe: never once up it’ll stay there.
Go with the storage heater like David suggested. 1.5KW per hour would cost you your ESB rate per hour. Say your rate is 40 cents per KW (unit) then it would cost you 60 cents per hour to run it. If you had it on for 4 hours it would cost you €2.40.
Can someone advise, which is more cost efficient, a storage plug in heater or a fan heater? Thank you
@Julie: Get the wattage off both units and I will run the calculations for you.
@Julie: I think an oil storage plug in heater is better, fan heaters need to be always on and when switched off you notice the temp. drop within 5 min. Oil radiators will switch off when a set temp. is reached and switch back on if the temp. falls below a certain amount also keep dont go cold quickly after they switch off.
@David Corrigan: Thank you David, the fan is 2000 watts and the storage heater is 1.5kw
@David Mc Cabe: Thank you David!
@Julie: @Julie: looks like the heater will use 25% less electricity over an hour and be on less because it stores a certain amt of heat. Keeping the heater on level 1 over an extended period is the way to use them.
@Julie: I have one of the Oil Filled Radiators 1.5kw, it has 3 setting 700w, 800w and 1.5kw. It has a min – max temperature dial. I mostly just use the 800w setting with the temp turned about 60-70% full. (Large Double Bedroom) At this setting it will switch on for 15 min, and turn itself off for about 10 min. So using a full hour of electric power it is actually on for 1hr 40 mins. I believe the price for this was about 16c – 20c per hour. ( 1hr 40mins of actually being on consuming power)
I only use the 1.5kw setting on the really colder days.
@David Mc Cabe: you are a star thank you!!
@John Keane: Thank you John
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