Reid defends HSE’s commitment to Sláintecare after resignations

Paul Reid, chief executive of the HSE, has defended its commitment to the Sláintecare plan to reform the health service in the wake of surprise resignations of the two people driving it.

Sláintecare executive director Laura Magahy and Prof Tom Keane, chairman of the advisory committee implementing the 10-year plan to change the health service, resigned last week.

Prof Keane said in a letter explaining his resignation that “the requirements for implementing this unprecedented programme for change are seriously lacking”.

Mr Reid said that the first time he became aware of the extent of their unhappiness was when they resigned last week.

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The HSE shared some of their frustration at the pace of reform during the Covid-19 pandemic but that the health service had been “working at pace” to protect the public, he said.

“There is no doubt if you take the past 18 months I am sure their frustration was and would be – as it is ours – that we could have got to some of the aspects they would have liked us to get to,” Mr Reid told RTÉ’s This Week programme.

He was “very sad to lose people of the calibre of people that we have”, he said.

Mr Reid said the HSE was committed to implementing Sláintecare, including the establishment of six health management regions.

“We are fully committed to all aspects of Sláintecare including regionalisation, including integration and specifically addressing the waiting lists. There is nobody [that] wants to get into this change [of] agenda more than ourselves and our teams in the HSE,” he said.

Questions

Róisín Shortall, the Social Democrats co-leader, is calling for both Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly and Department of Health secretary general Robert Watt to appear in front of the Oireachtas health committee and answer questions on the resignations.

“What exactly were the obstacles that were put in their way to introducing the much needed reform of the health service,” she said, adding that Mr Donnelly had to remove those obstacles so Sláintecare could be implemented. “We cannot continue to provide health services in the dysfunctional way we are doing,” she said, with hundreds of thousands of people denied access or forced to pay for private access to healthcare.

Galway West TD and Minister of State Hildegarde Naughton said the Government was “categorically” committed to the rollout of the programme, and wanted to understand the reasons they had stepped down. “You can be assured this is an absolute priority,” she said, but that there had been an impact on the programme arising from Covid and the HSE cyberattack earlier this year.

Ms Naughton said Mr Donnelly and the Taoiseach will be meeting with Laura Magahy and Prof Tom Keane in relation to the implementation of Sláintecare. She said a mid-year progress report on the implementation had been published, with 109 of 112 commitments on target.

Ms Shortall said there was institutional resistance to reform the health service. “If we continue to do things the way we’re currently doing them, nothing will change.” She said key priorities, including the restructuring of the HSE, were not happening, and “there isn’t the political will to do that”.

“The Government must stand up for Sláintecare, they will have the support of all parties if they do that.”

National Maternity Hospital

Meanwhile, Mr Reid told Newstalk radio that the HSE board had raised concerns about the proposed governance structure behind the new National Maternity Hospital on St Vincent’s hospital campus in south Dublin over the control it will give St Vincent’s Healthcare Group.

He was asked about a report in the Sunday Times that the start of the construction on the €500 million project had been delayed after the HSE board rejected the planned governance structure.

Mr Reid said that the board had not taken a vote or position on the matter but that it was an “iterative process” and the chairman had raised concerns with the Minister for Health.

The HSE board raised concerns about the make-up of the board comprising four members from St Vincent’s, four members from the maternity hospital and an independent chairman.

He said the audit and risk committee of the board did a “very thorough, detailed assessment” of the issue for the full board and the chairman passed on the board’s concerns to the minister.

Mr Reid said that the concerns would not result in a delay in the construction.

“It hasn’t stalled anything on it. The board’s position hasn’t set out to stall anything and it hasn’t. It has merely been a point-in-time feedback with the process,” he said.