Health Service Executive annual report and financial statements 2010.

The HSE at a glance • Two out of every five people (1.6m) in Ireland have a medical card • Over 17m prescriptions were dispensed for people with medical cards • There were almost 900,000 visits to our GP out of hours services • 3.8m payments were made for drug costs over €120 per month • Our uptake rate for the influenza vaccine is not achieving our target of 75% • 58,000 girls were offered the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccination in the 2010 / 2011 campaign • Two out of every five people are still waiting longer than our target of six hours in Emergency Departments • Referrals for elective surgery increased by 19% during 2010 • We will improve waiting times for people waiting for an outpatient appointment • 7,402 adults waited more than six months for elective surgery and 2,618 children waited more than three months • We delivered 74,418 babies in our hospitals • There were 3.5m attendances in our Outpatients Departments, an increase of 6% over 2009 • Almost 10,000 people received a home care package • Almost 3m personal assistance / home support hours were provided for people with disabilities • Over 1.3m people received either inpatient or day case treatment, a 4% increase over 2009 On average there was a 94% uptake on childhood vaccinations at 24 months but only 86% availed of the Meningococcal group C (MenC) vaccine • 95% of women requiring an urgent referral to breast cancer services were seen within 2 weeks • Over 1.1m people attended our Emergency Departments • Over 3.6m acute hospital bed days were used during 2010, 2% less than 2009 • We met the 28 day target for urgent colonoscopy in 98% of cases • All children in care should have a written care plan (90% had in 2010, against the 100% target). We will improve on our governance and accountability for children in our care • Our average length of stay in hospital is 6.1 days. We will reduce this to our target of 5.6 days • We will improve our rate of completion of disability assessments for children under 5 years of which only 21% are within timelines • We will continue to be vigilant in regard to our governance and control processes • Our average absenteeism rates are 4.7% against our target of 3.5% • Mental health inpatient readmission rates fell by 8% in 2010 • Increased levels of service were delivered in 2010 with 4% less budget than 2009 • We will focus on suicide prevention services as rates continue to grow – up by 15% on 2007 • We will continue to listen to our patient advocates • Over 11.68m home help hours were provided to over 54,000 peopl