The Health Committee chairman says management issues at the NHS are responsible for the rise in waiting times and not budget cuts, which Health Minister Micheal McGimpsey said were the cause of the "expected" rise.
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New figures from the Department of Health released on Thursday revealed that the number of people kept waiting longer than the target nine weeks has increased in the past three months.
A total of 29,149 patients failed to get appointments within the government's allotted time-period, an increase of 26% over figures for the previous quarter.
In response to the report, Health Minister Micheal McGimpsey released a statement saying "these rises are not unexpected" due to recent budget cuts in the department.
He called the results "disappointing", adding: "I have been warning about this scenario for many months. It is a direct result of my budget being repeatedly cut.
"If my budget is to be further cut then there will be more rises because we simply cannot meet the demand for services without the funding to match it."
However, Health Committee chair Jim Wells has questioned his claim that the waiting list failures were caused by financial troubles.
"The cuts that Mr McGimpsey refers to, the redistributing of the budget which was announced in February 2010, did not take effect during this period," Mr Wells told UTV.
"Now, it will in the next quarter, so clearly this must be an issue with management issues rather than finances.
"Also, I think if he digs a bit deeper, he will find that some trusts have performed much better than others."
John Compton, Chief Executive at the Regional Health and Social Care Board, says the issue has resulted from demand for appointments rising while finances remain the same.
"It's not a management issue because the deterioration is right across the province in all the Trust areas," Mr Compton said.
"I think the key issue here is the interplay between rise and demand. Mr Wells hasn't acknowledged fully the whole spending review.
"We have about 10% increase each year in requests for outpatient appointments and we have a very flat and contracted financial position.
"When you have rising demand and you don't have a financial response, one of the things you get is a rise in waiting times.
"It's not a surprise because at our board meeting each month we report where we are in terms of figures so we've seen that gradual deterioration."
He added that the board is working "energetically" to improve the situation.
"While the information is not happy information, and we're not content with it, there is an understanding of what is happening," Mr Compton continued.
"We are working energetically with the Trust and to minimise and improve it and we do expect to be better in the second half of the year."
The statistics report released on Thursday revealed that a total of 110,220 were still waiting for an appointment at the end of June this year, up 23,719 on numbers posted at the end of the previous quarter.
Government targets relating to outpatient waiting times state that by the end of March 2011, no patient should wait longer than nine weeks for a first outpatient appointment.
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