Hospitals will overspend by €100m: HSE chief

THE head of the Health Service Executive (HSE) has admitted hospitals will overspend by up to €100 million by the end of the year but said he is not concerned about it.

Prof Brendan Drumm said the overrun was not significant when taken in the context of the overall health budget of over €11 billion.

"We don't see the hospital figures as being that frightening," he said in his first media interview since taking up the post of chief executive a month ago.

The overrun is more than the cost of financing Tánaiste and Health Minister Mary Harney's ambitious €70m plan to resolve the A&E crisis.

Yesterday Prof Drumm said it would be up to two years before the Tánaiste's plan made any impact.

This was greeted with dismay by the Irish Nurse's Organisation (INO) which called for the immediate opening of 200 closed beds.

Prof Drumm said the beds shortage, exacerbated by a lack of affordable facilities for elderly patients - who as a consequence remain in acute hospitals - would require political action.

Given that two-thirds of acute beds are occupied by over 65s, Prof Drumm said it was time for a national policy on elderly care.

"There is now a level of responsibility that falls on us as a nation. Either you're going to have to create nursing home beds paid out of patients' estates or it becomes a demand on the taxpayer," said Prof Drumm.

Paul Murray of Age Action Ireland welcomed the call for a national policy on elderly care but warned it was important that people were not moved for the sake of "emptying beds".

Returning to the issue of hospital deficits, Prof Drumm said the HSE would be introducing a new funding system which should help eliminate overruns. He said hospitals would be told at the start of the year exactly how much they were getting and there would be no supplementary funding as there is under the current system.

"The way money has been negotiated through the system is about to change. By the end of this year (hospitals) will know for the first time for a full year going forward what the money available in the system is."

Prof Drumm said this would prevent leapfrogging by services which sought supplementary funds and got them because they'd run up a deficit, while high-performing services lost out through operating well.

He said hospital deficits would become a personal responsibility of his as a vote holder in the new system which will see the HSE allocate its own budget.

"I'm in a very unique position, outside of ministers, and it has very personal implications for me.

"While we will be in position to seek supplementary funding for major new initiatives or in extraordinary circumstances, it's going to be extremely difficult as a health service - which has fought for control of our budget - to go back to the Government after a year saying we've been incapable of doing that."

He denied an embargo had been placed on appointing extra specialists if hospitals were in the red. However he said any new post created between now and the end of the year would have to be brought to his attention and evaluated to see if it was necessary to improve quality of patient care.