€143m NTPF branded as ‘daft’ waste of money

A FLAGSHIP €143 million health scheme to get patients off waiting lists by paying for them to go private has been criticised after figures show more than a third of those helped were treated in the same hospital that left them languishing in the first place.

TDs branded the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) a “daft” waste of money that benefited commercial health “speculators” more than the sick.

The initiative, set-up to purchase care in the Irish and British private systems for those waiting longest, has dealt with 35,000 patients since its launch in 2002 and been heralded a major success by Tánaiste and Health Minister Mary Harney.

However, the Dáil Public Accounts Committee (PAC) yesterday heard that an examination by the Auditor General of 3,809 of the 13,600 procedures carried out last year showed 44% were in public hospitals and 36% occurred in the same health service hospital from where the referral originally came.

Socialist TD Joe Higgins ridiculed the scheme.

“It’s absolutely daft that patients in public hospitals have to be routed through outsiders to get procedures carried out in the same hospital where they are patients,” he said

Green TD Dan Boyle said: “It seems a more expensive way of doing things, to pay for public patients to be treated privately in the same public hospital they were in anyway,” he said.

Secretary General of the Department for Health and Children Michael Scanlan defended the scheme.

“I don’t accept it’s daft. If there is spare capacity at weekends I don’t see anything wrong in buying that capacity.”

Pressed by Mr Higgins as to why the spare capacity in public hospitals wasn’t used by the health service, Mr Scanlan admitted that more funding would provide better services, but it was not the only answer.

Health Department officials insisted the scheme had a beneficial effect on waiting lists.

Fine Gael TD John Deasy warned that many people found it hard to even get on a waiting list in the first place due to the lack of consultants.

HSE chief executive Prof Brendan Drumm agreed that access to a consultant was “the big bottleneck” in the system.

He said the reliance on inexperienced doctors at the moment was “totally unacceptable.”

Prof Drumm also appeared to be markedly at odds with Ms Harney over the need for a significant number of extra beds in the system.

He strongly advocated a move to freeing-up existing bed capacity by ploughing money into community care schemes.

The NTPF is also paying over the odds for some surgical procedures, according to the Auditor General.

The highest price paid for a gall bladder removal was more than twice the lowest price paid and the same massive disparity existed for skin lesion treatments.