The next government has been urged to review the decision to co-locate private hospitals on a number of public hospital sites across the State.
The plea from the Adelaide Hospital Society and the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice came yesterday at the publication of their policy paper on the health service in which they called for greater equity for public patients and an end to the two-tier health system.
Dr Fergus O'Ferrall, director of the Adelaide Hospital Society, said the building of the co-located hospitals would entrench the existing two-tier system of hospital care and make it all the more difficult in the future to bring about change in that system. The building of these hospitals would send out a powerful message about government backing and support for the existing system.
"The current policy direction is one that represents a significant threat to the fundamental values of care and justice, which require that health provision is seen first and foremost as an essential service, which should be available on the basis of need, not income."
He also said he hoped there would be a commitment in the next programme for government to take a fresh look at the capacity needs of our hospitals.
He said more acute beds were required for people with complex illnesses such as cancer but co-location was not the way to provide them. "It's not the right model to deliver the kinds of beds and the equality of care and the character of care that we need and it's certainly not the cheapest way to provide capacity . . . and it's not particularly fast.
"I mean, the Minister announced this in 2005 and we're two years down the track and there hasn't been a single bed delivered, so the idea that you can't build public capacity quickly is wrong," he said.
The private, co-located hospitals were planned by the Government to free up 1,000 beds in public hospitals.
Tenders invited by the Health Service Executive in April from developers willing to build the hospitals on six public hospital sites are now being assessed.
The sites involved are at Waterford Regional Hospital, Sligo General Hospital, Limerick Regional Hospital, Cork University Hospital and St James's and Beaumont hospitals in Dublin. Tenders are also expected to be sought shortly for the building of private hospitals next to Connolly and Tallaght hospitals in Dublin.
Meanwhile, Dr O'Ferrall said the new government should also revisit the decision to site the new national children's hospital on the Mater hospital site on Dublin's northside. "We believe a very defective decision has been taken and again we would hope that any new government would review that." Public patients were suffering, and dying, on waiting lists due to inequities in the current system, he said.
Margaret Burns, policy officer with the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice, said that too often in the Irish healthcare system values such as fairness are used as a mantra rather than an agenda for action.
The two organisations' joint policy document calls for full medical cards for 35 per cent of the population.