HSE says office staff numbers not too high

MORE THAN 1,300 people employed in the Mid-West health service are in office jobs.

For every six frontline medical staff employed in the Health Service Executive (Mid-West) there is one management/administrative/clerical worker, according to figures obtained by the Irish Examiner.

The HSE Mid West employs 8,616 people, and of these, 7,251 are frontline health workers such as doctors, nurses, therapists, paramedics, ambulance personnel and others.

The HSE has a management/admin/clerical staff of 1,365.

Medical staff are made up as follows: nurses (2,828), outpatient and client care (2,433), general support staff (618), health and social care (888), and dental medical (484).

A HSE spokesman said that clerical staff often give immediate back-up support to medical personnel.

The HSE spokesman said there is nothing out of kilter with these figures and the ratio of admin staff to medical personnel.

He said: “Nobody finds it difficult to understand that the defence forces require approximately six people for every one soldier on frontline duty. But many people seem to be mesmerised by the notion that the health service is stuffed with bureaucrats.”

Increased specialisation has to be taken into account, he said.

“Fifty years ago your local county hospital had a general surgeon who would take out an appendix, deliver a baby or remove a tumour and then write up his reports in a hardback ledger. Medical specialisation and technology has increased the need for a huge number of back-up staff who are immediately behind the clinicians in the frontline and without whom the modern health service would grind to a halt,” he said.

The spokesman said ratios in the United States are much “fatter” than they are in this country, “so the notion of bureaucratic excess is a modern urban legend, but one which is very difficult to eradicate from the popular imagination”.

He said where the health service had fallen down in the past was in failing to explain staff ratios in sufficient detail and plain enough English to the public.

No modern cancer clinic, for example, could possibly function without an array of managerial and clerical staff which would have been unheard of in times gone by.

“Nowadays we have to communicate more clearly across the spectrum to the public and this is one of the priorities of the new HSE management,” he said.