Funding needed to support reforms

REFORM of health service structures will make no difference to patients unless there is more investment in the system, a top health official insisted yesterday.

North Western Health Board chief executive Pat Harvey said structure reform will not be enough:

“It will not make a difference to patients in a significant way unless it is coupled with investment in beds, community services, respite care and support for people being discharged from hospital.”

The other chief executives of health boards backed this view and said reform of structures must be accompanied by more beds and a restructuring of the consultants’ contracts.

Their spokesman, Michael Lyons, said: “Our main concern is to ensure patients and users of health services will benefit from the new changes.”

The chief executives are concerned about having two separate systems for dealing with acute hospitals and community care because they claim it will not be in the patients’ interests.

Hospital consultants ruled out the proposal that their members taking up new posts would be confined to treating only public patients.

“We have no objection to this being an option for our members, but we will not have it forced down our throats as compulsory,” said IHCA secretary general Finbarr Fitzpatrick.

Consultants welcomed the proposal that they would take charge of their own budgets and said they have done this on a pilot basis in several hospitals.

The consultants warned they would not be used as scapegoats for lack of future funding in the health service.

Doctors generally welcomed the recommendation that the medical card scheme be reformed to include a practice budget for each GP.

However, Irish College of General Practitioners spokesman Dr Niall Ó Cleirigh said these budgets must be targeted at areas of greatest need:

“There is an internationally recognised link between poor health and poverty, so doctors in more deprived areas should get more than those in more well off regions.”

IMPACT, the union representing most administrative workers in the health boards said it would reserve its judgement until it begins direct negotiations with the Health Department.