The health service needs to operate on a Saturday as it does on a Friday, the head of the HSE has said.
Bernard Gloster told the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health that he wanted to move rosters away from the traditional Monday-Friday basis.
He said he appreciated that the introduction of what is known as 6/7 day rosters was “a big one for the trade unions to grapple with”.
However, he told Gino Kenny of People Before Profit/Solidarity that if there were lengthy delays in bringing about this new system, the benefits of the introduction of the new Sláintecare public patient-only contract for hospital consultants would not be fully realised. He said there were a lot of people around consultants in hospitals who needed to be part of such a system of working.
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Mr Gloster said such reforms had been agreed by unions as part of the public service pay agreement. The question now was “the prioritised disciplines we want to get to first”. He said there would be engagements with trade unions and professional organisations.
He said about 2,600 consultants had so far signed up to the new contract under which they could only treat public patients in public hospitals. This represents about 50 per cent of the medical specialist workforce.
The new contract also allows for more flexible rostering arrangements.
“We can roster as many of those on a Saturday or a Thursday night as we want to, but if they are to function within that, we need to build the rest of the infrastructure.”
Mr Gloster also told Róisín Shortall of the Social Democrats that the introduction of a four-day week for staff “merits consideration” but said it would have to be part of an overall public service agreement between unions and the Department of Public Expenditure.
HSE officials also told the committee that management at University Hospital Limerick had agreed that in future contracts for dealing with waiting lists would comply with competitive tendering arrangements, following a critical internal audit report earlier this week.
Mr Gloster also told the committee that the report on the death of Aoife Johnston at University Hospital Limerick last year would be published no later than next Monday. He said the report by former chief justice Frank Clarke was “very comprehensive” and “was being acted on”.
He said the report had “fulfilled all of its terms of reference”.
Sixteen-year-old Aoife, from Shannon in Co Clare, died of meningitis on December 19th, 2022, after she was referred to the hospital’s overcrowded emergency department with suspected sepsis that went untreated for more than 12 hours.
Separately, the top civil servant in the Department of Health told the committee that it was not sustainable in the long term to continue to increase the health budget in line with demand every year.
Robert Watt argued that reforms to how the health service worked would be key to meeting demand in a population that is both growing and ageing.
Mr Gloster told the hearing that “demand for services is only going in one direction and in many cases at a faster rate than had been predicted before the pandemic”.
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