There was a big reaction to the documentary broadcast on Tuesday night.
The HSE has issued a statement in response to
some of the revelations made about the hospital system in Ireland in Public Vs Private: The Battle for Care, an RTÉ Investigates documentary broadcast on Tuesday night.
Amongst the revelations in the documentary were that two HSE consultants were paid amounts estimated to be in the region of €30,000 for work that they did not do.
It was also revealed that private work by HSE consultants is impacting on the hours they work at public hospitals, despite the fact that they are paid full-time salaries, believed to be in the region of €130,000-€229,000 a year.
Failure to enforce consultants’ contracts is resulting in 14 out of the 47 acute public hospitals exceeding the 20% limit at the expense of public patients; as a result, a total of over 43,500 public patients on waiting lists lost out to private patients in the two-year period.
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On Wednesday afternoon, the HSE
issued a statement in response to the revelations in the documentary which read: “Ireland has a unique and complex health system in which hospital consultants have a right to treat private patients under their employment contract with the HSE. This poses a number of challenges for the public hospital system. Notwithstanding this, many consultants work beyond their contracted hours in public hospitals treating patients.
“Data from September 2017 shows the public/private mix for consultants across all hospitals nationally is 82% public for elective in-patients and over 85.8% public for day-cases (above the 80% target set out in the 2008 contract). National performance has been consistent at this level. The RTE Investigates programme details a number of cases where it appears this was not the case.
“The HSE expects all consultants to adhere to the requirements of their contract. Not doing so is unacceptable and each Hospital Group is required to monitor and ensure the contracted public hours are being delivered by consultants.
“Monitoring of the public/private mix is complex. For example, within a Hospital Group a range of services are delivered in different hospitals across the group. Typically, larger hospitals provide the bulk of emergency and complex care with smaller hospitals providing less complex emergency, day case and elective care. Consultants working between hospitals in the Hospital Group can fulfil their contractual public/private mix requirements in this way.
“The HSE provided a comprehensive response to the RTE Investigates programme based on the information that was made available to us by RTE. We also requested that RTE Investigates share any evidence it had regarding consultant non-compliance with the contract so that it can be fully investigated and addressed as appropriate. To date we have not received any correspondence from RTE Investigates in this regard. For the record, the HSE did provide a spokesperson who featured in the programme.
“It is noteworthy that the Sláintecare Report recommends a phased elimination of private practice from public hospitals in Ireland.”
