THE HEALTH Service Executive (HSE) is to seek to reduce the number of posts in the hospital sector by about 1,800 by the end of next year as part of its plans to reconfigure its employment structures more towards community services.
An internal financial report provided to the board of the HSE last month said that by the end of 2009 the National Hospitals Office was to operate at or within an employment ceiling of 51,000 whole-time equivalent personnel.
It said that this figure was 1,805 below the current ceiling for the sector and 1,746 whole-time equivalent posts fewer than the number of people actually working in the sector at present.
In a statement the HSE said that to achieve its objective of providing sustainable services, it had "commenced the process of reconfiguring our services to develop sustainable hospital and community services that provide the care people need now, and in the future".
"By delivering the majority of care in the community, we will enable hospitals to focus on improving accessibility to deliver more efficient acute and planned care.
"Preparing for the shift in practice and the reconfiguration of services involves reassessing our resources. Working within an employment control framework ['employment ceiling'], effective workforce planning, including ensuring the right staff are in the right service delivery setting, is essential to this process," it said.
The Irish Timesreported in May that the significant shift in HSE posts away from the hospital sector and towards the community formed part of a deal reached with the Department of Finance and the Department of Health which allowed employment levels to increase by 1,050 this year.
The reduction in posts in the hospital sector, which forms part of the reconfiguration process, is separate from the proposals for a voluntary redundancy scheme in the health sector under which 1,000 jobs could go.
Taoiseach Brian Cowen told the Dáil in May (while still Minister for Finance) in reply to Labour's Róisín Shortall that he had sanctioned the additional posts for services for the elderly, palliative care, disability, cancer and population health. He said this would bring the total numbers that could be officially employed in the health service to 112,560 by the end of 2008.
Mr Cowen said the deal also included a two-year reconfiguration target which required the HSE to reconfigure the numbers employed towards frontline services and towards the community side of healthcare.
He said this was in line with the HSE's policy of developing an integrated approach to healthcare.
Meanwhile, the HSE report given to the board of the organisation last month revealed that the number of staff on the payroll is continuing to fall.
The report showed there were about 3,000 fewer staff employed at the end of May than there were last August when employment restrictions were put in place to deal with a significant financial deficit. The number of whole-time equivalent staff employed in May was 110,090 compared with nearly 113,000 last August.