TVScope: Casualty, BBC1, Saturdays, 8pm (times vary)
Note to Mary Harney and Prof Brendan Drumm: why pay a million a day, or whatever it is, to advisers to tell you how to run the health service, when you can get loads of good ideas for free by watching programmes like Casualty?
Casualty has been serving up its diet of excitement, pain, lust, romance and anguish since 1986, and looks as though it will go on for the foreseeable future.
The first great idea we might borrow from Casualty is that of providing holistic treatment in A&E cubicles - without bothering too much about hospital wards.
A cubicle in an Irish hospital is a place where people wait in pain and discomfort before moving on to a better place. In that sense, it's a bit like Catholic Purgatory and, for all we know, our A&E wards are modelled on that idea. But in Casualty, people in cubicles are cured, they have their emotional histories laid bare, meet estranged and indeed strange relatives, and get both emotional and physical problems sorted out. Who could begrudge a few days on a trolley for that?
Of course, to bring all this off we would need to boost the glamour level of our A&E consultants. Real casualty consultants, in my experience, can be a bit cross and not that romantic.
But look at Harry Harper in Casualty. Harry manages to be everywhere and to do everything. He treats patients, kisses female colleagues, fights with management and teaches junior doctors, all at more or less the same time. And if there is a hair out of place, you just know he meant it to be that way.
The recruitment of a phalanx of multi-tasking, multi-skilled consultants like Harry would send the throughput of our Irish casualty departments soaring, even with additional fainting on the part of female patients.
Admittedly, having chaps like Harry around brings with it a certain amount of romantic turbulence. At last count, Harry has kissed or had non-clinical contact with colleagues Lara, Evelyn, Anna, and Selina.
Oh well, that sort of thing doesn't go on in our Irish hospitals - it would probably be a breach of the consultants' contract and they wouldn't tolerate that at all.
Here's another idea that just might appeal to the Minister: Holby City Hospital's casualty department is located in Bristol, about 125 miles from Elstree, where the wards are filmed.
This is just the sort of idea that makes Casualty invaluable. How many experts would it take, at what cost and how long would it take them, to come up with an excellent idea like this? Look at the reduction in demand on beds in St James's Hospital that could be achieved if the A&E department was located in, say, Leitrim, where, as a bonus, the scenery is better?
Still, these things don't run themselves. Even with the A&E department separated from the wards by a hundred miles, a glamorous consultant and nurses with endless dedication, you still need really, really good management is to make it all work.
You need a Nathan. Nathan Spencer is the hate figure in Casualty, a young pup whose twin gods are public relations and the bottom line. He baits Harry mercilessly and is generally obnoxious - just the sort of chap we need to help us sort out our system. And I bet we could have him for as little as, oh, €1,500 a day?
Padraig O'Morain is a journalist and counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.