THERE IS huge inequity in the way in which funding is allocated for primary and community care services across the Health Service Executive’s 32 local health office areas, with some getting a lot more money than others, a new report has found.
When researchers from Dublin City University, University College Dublin and Maynooth College looked at the distribution of the €4.9 billion in primary and community care funding routed through the HSE’s local health office areas in 2007 they found wide variations in spending per capita in each area.
Spending was lowest in the Dublin West local health office area at around €537 per capita and highest in the West Cork local health office area at an estimated €4,515 per capita.
The breakdown is contained in a report commissioned and funded by the Health Research Board and the HSE which is due to be published today. The research was undertaken in a bid to come up with a more equitable model for allocating resources to primary and community care services in the State. These services would include mental health, child care, disability, elderly and nursing home care, speech and language therapy, public health and paramedic services.
The report, Resource Allocation for the Health Service Executive, a Model for the Primary, Continuing and Community Care, attempts to come up with a way of allocating resources on the basis of the age, sex and needs of people in each area. But its authors point out this was difficult because of limited data and different information systems across the healthcare system.
“This exercise has shown with great clarity the inadequacy of current Irish health information systems for the management of HSE. Fixing this must be a priority,” the report says.
Prof Anthony Staines of DCU, one of the report’s authors, said there were currently no unique personal identifiers that run across the health system. “This leads to significant costs and a risk of serious errors,” he said.