Call for rethink on hospital trusts

The Government should halt its moves to establish new hospital trusts and rethink its plans to introduce a universal health insurance system, a new report has argued.

The report, commissioned by the union Impact, said new groups of hospital trusts were being established before funding and staffing levels were agreed.

It also said hospital trusts were being put in place without proper consideration about how they would be integrated with primary care and other non-hospital services.

“Patient safety and service quality is being put at risk because independent hospital trusts and other structures are being implemented before fundamental issues are resolved.”

The report said the funding model proposed by the Government for its universal health insurance system was “deeply flawed” and was unlikely to deliver value.

The introduction of universal health insurance and the establishment of hospital trusts are key elements of the health reform plans of Minister for Health James Reilly.

However the report’s author, Dr Jane Pillinger, said the creation of independent hospital trusts, with their own boards, budgets and staffing ceilings, would not necessarily lead to better quality care or to the integration of hospital and primary/community care services.

She warned the same risky mistakes that took place when the HSE was established were being repeated.

She said the Government had based its approach on policy in the Netherlands “where a system of competing private insurers has created an inequitable and inefficient system of funding, different tiers of entitlement, rising hospital deficits and even bankrupt hospitals”.

Impact national secretary Louise O’Donnell said the stakes were high, and that currently the Minister’s plans were being shaped out of public sight.