OUTSOURCING:MANY OF the letters now dispatched to patients attending Dublin's Tallaght Hospital have been typed in the Far East, following outsourcing of the job to cut costs, it has emerged.
Prof Seán Tierney, a consultant surgeon at the hospital and the newly elected president of the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO), told delegates attending the final day of the organisation’s three-day annual conference in Killarney, Co Kerry, of the development as he hit out at the privatisation of health services.
“The very idea of publicly provided healthcare – indeed, public services of any kind – is under attack,” he said on Saturday.
“We have seen care of the elderly privatised, more and more acute hospital care privatised. There are plans to privatise laboratory services. Many of the outpatient letters in my own hospital in Tallaght are now outsourced – that is, the outgoing letters are sent by internet to be typed in the Far East. There have been moves to privatise primary care centres.”
Doctors in Tallaght dictating a letter to be typed abroad can only give the patient’s hospital identification number to the typist to protect patient confidentiality. When the typed letter is returned, it has to be matched with the patient’s name and address before it is sent out.
In his presidential address, Prof Tierney said that in 20 years of working in the health service, he had never seen morale so low among staff in every role. “How can the work you do be of value and important if there is no need to replace you when you are sick?” he asked.
However, while money for healthcare and public services was in short supply, there seemed to be plenty of money to invest in failed banks, he added.