Sir, – The Department of Health’s efforts to punish underperforming hospitals appears to be aping the HSE in its attempt to place blame on others for its own failings (“Hospitals falling behind in performance face exclusion from funding for new consultants”, News, July 11th). Ultimately it will be patients and frontline staff who will pay the price for permanent health service management failings.
In Ireland, doctors and nurses face public regulatory body inquiries for failings yet independent oversight of permanent health service management is essentially non-existent. A complaint against a hospital doctor or nurse can lead to a public inquiry while a complaint against a hospital manager is “investigated” by the HSE itself, if at all. Independent oversight, such as it exists, is confined to High Court actions by affected patients which, if successful, result in the taxpayer bearing the costs, with zero personal consequences for health service management.
Weak regulatory bodies and politicians, as well as media that continually fail to challenge underperforming health service managers, are enabling this. In essence, medical and nursing staff, along with patients, are having to subsidise serial sub-performance by permanent health service management. The HSE, with increasing levels of outsourcing, appears to view itself more as an administrative services provider than a health service provider. Administrative costs and bureaucracy are added with little improvement in services.
Until we get proper independent oversight for permanent health service management, nothing will change. There is little chance of the HSE and Department of Health senior officials proposing this themselves, so responsibility resides with politicians as well as the media and front-line representative groups to do so. Blaming and seeking to punish medical staff is simply a diversionary tactic to distract from the ongoing lack of oversight and accountability for permanent health service management. – Yours, etc,
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RUARY MARTIN,
Sandyford,
Dublin 18.