Healthcare Report fails to address overwhelming capacity deficits that cause long waiting lists and trolley crises
Healthcare Report fails to address overwhelming capacity deficits
that cause long waiting lists and trolley crises
Tuesday 30th May 2017: The Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA) has said that the Report on the Future of Healthcare, published today by the Oireachtas Committee, does not contain realistic solutions to address the overwhelming shortage of hospital beds and other facilities which are causing unacceptable waiting lists and delays for patients in public hospitals.
In the past decade the State has cut acute hospital capacity by 1,400 inpatient beds, at a time when the country’s population has increased by over 500,000. Waiting lists for in-patient care are growing annually as a consequence and they will only be reduced when significant additional resources are committed to this problem.
The IHCA asserted that the resources currently available to the public health system are not sufficient to cater for the public need for care. To promote an environment where a single-tier system will evolve, the capacity of the public health care system must be increased significantly. The report has singularly failed to deal with this central issue. By failing to articulate the need for significant investment in the public health system, the unintended consequence of this report is that it will retard the subsequent development of an adequate public health system.
Dr Tom Ryan, President of the IHCA, said: “It is disappointing that the Report on the Future of Healthcare does not contain an annual commissioning plan to put the necessary acute hospital bed and other facilities in place to end dependence on trolleys and continuously increasing waiting lists, once and for all. Hoping to provide care to an increasing number of patients in the public health system without sufficient capacity is not a realistic strategy.’’
The IHCA President said that despite the report’s suggestion that the phased elimination of private care from public hospitals will expand capacity, in effect the contrary will apply. He said it will actually reduce hospital capacity as the loss of €700 million annually in health insurance income to public hospitals will prove impossible to replace through increased taxation. Crucially the report underestimates the realistic cost of providing timely care to the growing number of patients. Furthermore, the growth in the demand for hospital care due to demographic factors, and the impact of medical inflation, have not been provided for in the report.
It is not consistent to simultaneously reduce taxation and at the same time propose increased public health care funding. There is a significant risk that the private income to public hospitals will be removed with little if any replacement funding and that the public health system will be impoverished and risk a catastrophic failure during a future wintertime crisis as a consequence.”
Dr Ryan said that the proposed removal of private care in public hospitals would give rise to a more extreme two-tiered acute hospital system due to inadequate public hospital capacity.
Dr Ryan added that one of the adverse consequences of the report’s recommendations would be a consultant recruitment and retention crisis on an unprecedented scale. He said some of the proposals if implemented will cause an exodus of existing high calibre experienced consultants which will prove impossible to replace. This, he said, will exacerbate the current crisis consisting of over 400 permanent consultant posts which are unfilled on a permanent basis, a full 15% of the current number of approved posts.
Dr Ryan concluded that the Association will seek an urgent meeting with the Minister for Health to ensure that the above adverse or unintended consequences are addressed. The Association warned that if these consequences are not addressed the provision of proper and timely care for patients in acute hospitals will be set back by decades.
ENDS
For further information contact:
James Dunny, FleishmanHillard 086 388 3903