MOVES TO introduce two centralised call centres for the ambulance service are being hampered by the public service industrial dispute, a Dáil committee was told yesterday.
Prof Brendan Drumm, chief executive of the Health Service Executive, also told the Dáil Committee on Public Accounts that he would be retiring from the HSE in August and the organisation was actively seeking his replacement.
Labour Party TD Tommy Broughan highlighted shortfalls in the ambulance service in Dublin outlined in the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General John Buckley. These included that the HSE and the Dublin Fire Brigade were operating separate systems and had no memorandum of understanding between them.
He said the nearest ambulance was not always sent to the scene of a call-out and the service was “incredibly dysfunctional”. He pointed out that the response time to emergency calls of eight minutes was only achieved in 25 per cent of cases, while in the UK the figure was 75 per cent.
Brian Gilroy, HSE national director for commercial and support services, said a new dispatch system was planned with two centralised centres for the whole country. They were also trying to advance the memorandum of understanding, but due to the industrial dispute, not all of the stakeholders would engage and both projects were tied up.
Prof Drumm acknowledged the difficulties in the service. “I am not here to defend the indefensible,” he said. The implementation of the new system would dramatically improve the service, he said.
“It seems unfair from a patient point of view that an industrial dispute is preventing the introduction of a state of the art IT system,” he added.
He also defended a decision to introduce a centralised system for medical card applications, and said call delays to the centre were down to the industrial dispute. He said the calls were being deliberately redirected to a call centre in Swords to undermine the system.
Prof Drumm also said the HSE was trying not to see tensions in the dispute “ratcheted up”.
“Any ratcheting up of the dispute by us could spread rapidly into areas that affect patient services,” he said. “We need to be very careful we don’t reach a point where that will happen.”
Asked about his retirement, Prof Drumm said his term would be completed in mid-August. The board was actively “pursuing making an appointment” and wanted to identify someone in advance of his departure, he said.
In what appeared to be a response to a comment made by Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary that he would like to take charge of the health service, Prof Drumm said “the idea you can just come in and apply changes in the public sector like you would in the private sector is naive in the extreme”.
The committee was also told that the swine flu vaccine programme cost €28 million in 2009 and will cost €55 million this year. The out-of-hours doctors’ service cost €108 million.
Prof Drumm also told the committee he could not give details of the 226 consultants who are in breach of their new contracts with the HSE because they have performed too much private work as it would be in breach of the Data Protection Act.
The new contracts require that private work may not exceed 20 per cent of workload for new consultants and 30 per cent for existing consultants.
