IT WILL be a matter of luck in future as to whether privately insured patients are treated as such when they are admitted through the emergency department of public hospitals.
This is due to changes under the new consultants’ contract which have been confirmed by the Health Service Executive (HSE).
Under the new rules, if the consultant who happens to be on duty and who admits the privately insured patients has a contract to treat only public patients the former will have no right to a private room or to be treated as a private patient, even if they have been paying private health insurance premiums for years.
The HSE has written to the Voluntary Health Insurance (VHI) and other health insurers in recent days telling them to inform customers of the change “to avoid the confusion and added distress that might arise at the time of an emergency admission if the insured patients have an expectation of private patient status or accommodation which cannot be met”.
It is estimated that 20 to 25 per cent of consultants in public hospitals have now opted for public-only contracts, the HSE said.
These contracts, which are also called Type A contracts, were introduced in the past year following the renegotiation of contracts with hospital consultants.
Doctors opting for them will get higher salaries of up to €240,000 a year to compensate them for giving up private practice rights.
Alan Moran of the HSE, in his letter to the chief executive of the VHI on April 8th, says that the Department of Health has given definitive instructions that Type A consultants may accept patients on a public basis only and therefore private charges will not arise.
“The consequences of this ruling are that any patients with private health insurance who are admitted under Type A consultants in public hospitals will be classed as public patients; insured patients will be added to the public patient waiting lists for outpatient appointments with Type A consultants; insured patients treated by a Type A consultant will not have the option of private treatment by any secondary consultant involved in their care regardless of that consultant’s contract type; insured patients under a Type A consultant will be accommodated in public beds only,” the letter, seen by The Irish Times, says.
It adds: “We are requesting the private health insurers on the basis of this ruling to inform their members that they will not be eligible for private treatment or private accommodation should they be referred to or admitted under a Type A consultant.
“In the case of elective treatment, insured patients may have the choice of a consultant, but in the event of an emergency admission it is less likely that such a patient choice could be facilitated.”
The VHI said last evening it had not yet written to patients but as a first step had asked the HSE for the names of all consultants who have signed Type A contracts.
“The new consultant contract only has implications for privately insured patients if they are admitted to a public hospital through an AE department under a consultant with a Type A contract,” it said.