HEALTH SERVICE authorities have “gone after” the hospital consultants who are the worst offenders for seeing too many private patients and would be pursuing more in the future, Minister for Health James Reilly has said.
In his first comments since the HSE removed the right to charge private patients treated in its facilities from a small number of consultants for allegedly breaching the terms of their contract, the Minister signalled that health authorities would vigorously defend any challenge to the move in the courts.
Dr Reilly said that some problems being experienced in some emergency units were due to inefficient practices and “turf wars” between hospitals rather than as a result of a shortage of money.
The Minister restated Government policy that there would be no additional money provided to the HSE this year. He signalled that he would be making a case for the reimbursement of €58 million in costs arising from voluntary redundancy and early retirement schemes in the health service.
Asked about the HSE’s decision to remove the rights to charge private patients from two of its hospital consultants, the Minister said: “The reality is we have gone after the worst offenders first.”
“There are two of them and if they want to go to court we are right up there waiting for them. We are going after the next 40 then. There are 2,500 consultants in our service, the vast majority of them are working very hard and doing there best. Some of them, because of the insurance situation in this country with 53 per cent of people insured, are overshooting their commitment.
“But people who are being blatant in my view, receiving one private for every public patient or two privates for every public patient, that’s unacceptable. They will be pursued, they will be made an example of because it is not fair to the public, it is outside their contract and it’s not fair on their colleagues either.”
The Minister said he will receive a report at the end of the week from the new special delivery unit on problems in the emergency unit at the Mid-Western Regional Hospital in Limerick.
He said that the Government intended to keep its promised to keep down waiting times for patients in emergency departments. He maintained that the problems did not necessarily stem from a shortage of money.
“There are hospitals who are continuing to do day surgery who should have passed that day surgery out to the smaller hospitals. They haven’t. There are nurses still employed in certain hospitals that are in certain departments where a department doesn’t exist any more and there is a shortage in other hospitals.
“That’s not the union’s fault. It is not the fault of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation. They are quite happy to move [but there are] turf wars taking place between some hospitals and that’s going to stop. They are just some examples of issues that need to be addressed that are nothing to do with money but are to do with organisation and management.”