THE UK-BASED Irish doctor who was the original choice to be the first head of the Health Service Executive has said he would have focused on “re-enthusing compassion and listening” if he had taken the job.
Speaking at a symposium in Trinity College Dublin to mark the tercentenary of its medical school, Prof Aidan Halligan said if he had become the chief executive of the HSE he would have concentrated on accident and emergency, waiting lists and waiting time.
He said he believed in targets and in league tables and had seen them work. However, change would have had to come from the bottom up, he said. He had never seen a strategy work in his life nor seen a policy implemented.
“I would have done it from the bottom up. First thing I would do I would listen to patients.”
Prof Halligan said he would have appointed a patient experience ombudsman in every part of the country. He would also have put in place patient safety ombudsmen.
“If I find whistleblowers I have a metric around how honest they are. If they are honest, I would appoint them formally with responsibility only to the chairman and chief executive.”
He said that while this practice had caused some upset, “it had made a huge difference”.
Prof Halligan said that if he had been appointed as the first HSE chief executive he would have met patients in GPs’ surgeries around the country, not to treat them, but rather to ask “where their care was not right . . . Every time you listen to the detail, you find the same lessons recurring”.
He said he would also have had non-consultant doctors in hospitals “tell us what they see”.
Speaking at the event yesterday, which was organised by the Trinity College medical alumni, he said he had spent every moment since turning down the position thinking about what he would have done. He said he would have gone around and spoken and listened. He also maintained there would have been “no secrecy” under any administration he ran.
He joked this meant he would have lasted five minutes in charge.
Prof Halligan is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin and has held a number of senior medical administrative posts in the UK.
Between January 2003 and October 2005, he served as deputy chief medical officer for England. During that period, he was offered the job of chief executive when the HSE was being established. He decided not to accept. He is currently director of education at University College London Hospitals.
