HEALTH INSURANCE:A DECISION by the VHI not to cover co-located hospitals has been criticised by the chief executive of the Beacon Medical Group, who says the project could create 3,500 new jobs and 700 extra hospital beds.
The co-location project, introduced by former minister for health Mary Harney in 2005, aims to free up beds in public hospitals by moving private patients out of public beds and into new on-site private hospitals.
In its health policy document published last week, Fianna Fáil said it would not pursue the policy of co-location, because the potential to attract private finance for health investment was “questionable”.
But it said signed contracts relating to projects at four hospitals “will be respected in full”.
However, the project has had difficulty getting funding from banks, partly because of the VHI’s refusal to cover hospitals, according to Beacon Medical Group chief executive Michael Cullen.
The VHI yesterday said it was of the view that there was sufficient private capacity already.
In response, Mr Cullen said this claim “belies the truth”.
"One only has to look at Irish Nursing Organisation surveys and trolley counts every day. There are waiting lists of up to three years for orthopaedic operations in Limerick," he told RTÉ radio's News at Oneprogramme.
Mr Cullen said private patients were effectively leeching off the public system, adding “the public patient is subsidising the private patient through this anomaly in the regulations”.
In a statement, the VHI said it was not a party to the original co-located contracts and never had any sight of their contents.
The nature of any private hospital development must involve risk taking, a spokeswoman said.
“Beacon Medical Group is asking VHI Healthcare to guarantee the future economic viability of its proposed co-located hospitals and we are not in the business of providing such guarantees for any ‘for profit’ private hospital provider,” she said.