THE HEALTH Service Executive (HSE) has forecast that it will record a financial overrun of about €184 million on its demand-led drug schemes which include the medical card, by the end of the year.
In a report to its board last week, HSE management also said that figures to the end of October showed that hospitals were close to a financial breakeven situation and were ahead of their service delivery targets.
"The target remains that hospitals will achieve a financial breakeven by year-end," the report said.
It also said the HSE's primary, community and continuing care (PCCC) section was performing well in terms of budgets set for each local health office (LHO) with the exception of the community-based schemes which were continuing to run ahead of budget.
Excluding the demand-led schemes, expenditure in community services was in the black to the tune of €68 million. However, when the demand-led, community-based schemes are included, there was a net deficit of €81 million "for PCCC at the end of October", it said.
"At the end of October, the vote is €31 million over profile and, with strict control of expenditure for the remaining eight weeks, we believe that a balanced vote outturn will be achieved by year-end," the report stated.
However, it maintained that this assumption was based on the HSE receiving supplementary funding to take account of a shortfall in funding expected from the UK authorities and from the health levy. This supplementary estimate for about €350 million was brought before the Oireachtas last week.
It said that before this supplementary funding, the HSE had recorded a deficit of €112 million to the end of October.
The HSE report said that in the PCCC area it had successfully achieved cost-containment targets.
"Excluding demand-led schemes, PCCC financial performance within services shows savings in the order of €66.5 million. This demonstrates the good progress made within PCCC on the management and delivery of cost-containment plans across local health offices. We are achieving target levels for our cost-containment programme and at this stage have available approximately €45 million [of our planned €50 million] to contribute to the overall demand-led schemes deficit," the report stated.
"As previously reported, the principal contributing factor to overall budgetary pressures within PCCC continues to be the sustained growth in demand-led schemes. The level of medical card coverage within the population currently stands at 30 per cent. The total number of individuals who are now covered by a medical card is 1,339,776, with an increase in the order of 6,235 recorded for October," it stated.