TAOISEACH ENDA Kenny has sharply criticised the failure of many public hospitals to live within their budgets and said no additional money would be made available to them.
Speaking in Galway yesterday, where he opened NUI Galway’s new engineering block among a number of engagements, Mr Kenny said it was “a matter of competence and management and overseeing of expenditure”.
“It is about devising a system where money follows the patient,” Mr Kenny said, commenting on a report this week of significant hospital budget overruns.
“We can’t have a situation being allowed to continue where year after year after year budgets are allocated to hospitals, hospitals sign on for those budgets, and hospitals sign on to deliver services based on those budgets, and halfway through the year we find that they are completely out of control.
“It’s either incompetence, it’s either mismanagement, or it is expenditure on agencies or whatever. It comes back to the point which we have been saying for years that you need a system where money follows the patient, where hospitals are paid for what they do,” he said.
“The Minister for Health has already made it clear that there is no more money to be allocated and there is none available,” Mr Kenny continued.
Hospitals with “highly paid, highly trained consultants” had to “deliver the services for which they have signed on”, he emphasised.
Referring to University Hospital Galway, he said it suffered from an “inability to manage its affairs in a competent fashion”. Hospitals “had to be seen to be in control of their budgets”, he said. “This has got to stop.”
It emerged on Thursday the Health Service Executive’s deficit for the year to date has reached €195 million, with hospital deficits at more than €120 million. The collective deficit facing the State’s hospitals has grown by more than €20 million in a month.
The highest deficit is at the Mid-Western Regional Hospital in Limerick, which exceeded its budget for the first five months by €14.4 million, or 26 per cent.
On the potential impact on patients, HSE director of finance Liam Woods said he could not say what it would mean on a “uniform” basis because the situation was different in each hospital.
Speaking on RTÉ Radio's News at Oneyesterday, Mr Woods said the "big picture" for the executive this year was that its budget had been reduced by €1 billion.
Each hospital and each of the executive’s four areas had plans in place to deal with the challenge faced.
Mr Woods said that challenge was “clearly very large – in fact unprecedented – in terms of what we are facing as a society”.
In the case of Limerick, Mr Woods said the hospital had some income outstanding, which, if collected, would help alleviate the problem.
Stephen McMahon of the Irish Patients’ Association said the situation could not be allowed to continue. “If these hospitals run out of cash, staff will not be paid, suppliers will not be paid and patients will not be treated.”
Louise O’Donnell, Impact national secretary and the head of the union’s health division, claimed the HSE had not used the process outlined in the Croke Park agreement to engage with unions.
She said there was a “smoke and mirrors” situation going on where agency staff were being used to fill roles.