THE HEALTH Service Executive (HSE) is planning to implement controversial reforms of the country's hospital laboratory system, a pathology conference in Dublin was told yesterday.
The reforms were proposed last year by external consultants but never officially published. Speaking at the pathology forum, Michael Lyons, former chief executive of the Eastern Regional Health Authority and Crumlin hospital, said he understood from senior HSE figures that an implementation process was about to be put in place that would involve consultation with interested parties.
The Irish Timesrevealed last August that Ministers had been advised privately by the Department of Health that the consultants' report proposed "widespread rationalisation" of laboratory services around the country.
The plan would see routine tests ordered by GPs or community services separated from those requested from hospitals and carried out by new stand-alone, highly-automated laboratories, based in Dublin, the south and the west. It suggested the private sector could provide these proposed facilities.
The report also recommended that the services of the existing 40-plus hospital laboratories dealing with tests requested for hospital patients should in future be concentrated in a much smaller number of advanced new facilities, based at between eight and 14 acute regional hospitals.
The report envisaged "a substantial reduction" in the number of technical staff required in the future. It also anticipated "substantial savings" on the HSE's current €328 million annual bill for clinical pathology laboratory services.
However, the HSE never officially published the report, but it did brief the Cabinet sub- committee on health on the proposals.
The HSE's national director for contracts, Tom Finn, was scheduled to speak at the conference on the implementation of a new system of service delivery for laboratory medicine services but he pulled out at the last minute.
In his presentation Mr Lyons said that his understanding from talking to Mr Finn on Monday was that the report had been endorsed by the board of the HSE and that "an implementation process was about to be put in place where consultation will be held with interested parties. There is likely to be a national approach taken to this ... probably under a project manager working to an implementation group," he said.
Mr Lyons said while the report was not officially available, there was a high degree of knowledge about its content.