HOSPITAL consultants should receive an extra £13,000 a year, according to a major report into their pay and conditions.
The increases recommended in the Buckley Review on Hospital Consultants - ranging from 6.5 per cent to 18 per cent - would cost the Exchequer £13 million a year.
The report, which deals with the remuneration of consultant medical staff employed by health boards, public voluntary hospitals, and other health agencies, was published yesterday by the Department of Finance after a considerable delay. Approximately 1,000 consultants are affected.
A 3 per cent pay increase is recommended from April 1994 for all hospital consultants and a similar rise from May 1995. The rise for 1997 is yet to be negotiated. This means, according to the report, a rise of up to £5,500 for some doctors and an average increase of £4,000 for others.
The review body, chaired by Mr Michael Buckley, managing director of AIB Capital Markets, stressed yesterday that the implementation of the revised salary rates was dependent on consultants agreeing to changes in terms and conditions.
One of the review body's main proposals is the merging of two categories of consultants - each currently earning between £58,000 and £62,000 - and giving them an increase of £3,000.
The category of geographical whole-time consultants, without fees, would be abolished. There are about 90 of them in the State.
The remaining Category 1 consultants should have an exclusive commitment to public hospitals, attending from Monday to Friday in normal working hours. Category 11 would provide a variety of, commitments depending on the extent of the consultant's off-site private practice. Current arrangements on private practice should cease when facilities become available in individual hospitals.
The report says that Category 11 consultants who are not in a position to confine their practices entirely to the public hospitals should be permitted to earn up to, but no more than, 12.5 per cent of their public salary from this off-site private practice.
The review body says that a single rate of on-call allowance is not acceptable as consultants face very different time demands. Consultants who work on less onerous rosters, described as 1 in 4, or 1 in 5, or 1 in 6 weekends, would have their allowances eliminated and the remainder included in their basic salary. At present they receive £3,500 in allowances in total.
Those on the more onerous 1 in 1 rota, who are constantly on-call, are to receive £3,000 a year, £2,500 for 1 in 2, and £1,000 for 1 in 3.
In the current scale of call-out fees there is an annual limit of £4,583 for all consultants. The report recommends that the first 40 call-outs not be remunerated. However, there would be a significantly increased annual ceiling of £17,500 which might be claimed by consultants on the more onerous rotas.