National Health Board Chief Executive Officers have welcomed news of a radical restructuring of the health service.
Their comments follow a report in the
Irish Times
today which says a Government-appointed audit is recommending wholesale administrative changes including the abolition of health boards.
While welcoming the review, they warned reform of organisational arrangements alone would "not be sufficient."
Having "urged the review from the outset" the CEO's said they "presumed" that "discussion, consultation and agreement" would be required with affected parties before the recommendations were implemented.
The audit is reported to recommend the establishment of four regional health bodies and a reduction in size of the Department of Health in favour of a Department that focuses exclusively on strategy development and policy making.
While they had not seen the report they said they were looking forward "to seeing the detailed resultsof the Prospectus audit and the reasoning behind any conclusions it reaches regarding all elements within the system."
Warning structural reform was not a "single panacea for addressing the needs of the health service" and that a "much wider" range of reforms was required, they said "new organisation arrangements in themselves will not be sufficient to deliver on the Health Strategy."
The CEO's said it was essential that expediency is avoided at the expense of "relevance, practicality and necessity and that any new organisational arrangement builds on and consolidates the evident strengths of the current system."
