Health Service Executive to audit 10 hospitals

The Health Service Executive (HSE) is to carry out an audit of 10 hospitals around the country to determine if they are providing value for the money being allocated to them, the Minister for Health, Mary Harney, said yesterday.

Answering questions before the Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children, Ms Harney said the audit would examine whether it was possible to achieve better results.

The Minister said hospitals would receive nearly €400 million extra this year and the HSE would look at whether better value could be provided and more patients treated.

She said one issue was whether consultants could on a daily basis discharge patients admitted under the care of one their colleagues. She said this was already done during holidays.

Ms Harney reiterated that she would be looking for greater flexibility from consultants in a forthcoming review of their contract with the State and that all groups in the health sector would be expected to embrace change.

"Innovators who worked quietly in the background were often ignored", while those who shouted loudest and protested against change were rewarded.

"Clearly that situation is not sustainable," she said.

Ms Harney expressed her support for the new healthcare assistant grade in hospitals, which is at the centre of a row between health service managers and the Irish Nurses' Organisation.

The HSE is seeking to withhold a 3.5 per cent pay rise from 30,000 nurses over an alleged lack of co-operation with the introduction of the new grade.

Ms Harney said she supported nurses taking on roles that were traditionally performed by doctors.

The Minister said that in the UK there was a ratio of 70:30 between nurses and healthcare assistants but that Ireland had a long way to go to reach such figures.

Ms Harney told the committee that there was no question of GPs receiving additional money for operating the new "doctor-only" medical card, which the Government announced last year.

She appealed to the Irish Medical Organisation to "address the issue positively" and not to let outstanding industrial relations issues stand in the way.

Ms Harney said the Government had allocated €50 million to fund the introduction of the doctor-only medical card and that this would equate to around €25,000 in capitation rates per GP in the scheme.

Ms Harney said the amount paid to GPs under the general medical services scheme had effectively doubled from €158 million to around €300 million between 1998 and 2002 - at a time when the number of patients with medical cards had fallen by 100,000.

Question by Labour Party health spokeswoman Liz McManus on reports from the HSE of a funding shortfall of nearly €200 million in funding for this year, Ms Harney said she believed there was scope across the system for savings and that these could be achieved without having any impact on frontline services.