FG warns HSE move could ‘adversely affect patient care’

FINE GAEL has accused the Health Service Executive (HSE) of engaging in doublespeak on hospital overspending.

They were responding to a report that the HSE has introduced a directive excluding hospitals with overspends of more than 5% of their budgets from additional development funding.

Fine Gael TD Denis Naughton said: “The HSE decision to withdraw development funding will seriously impact on patient services and could adversely affect patient care.”

The latest financial report for the health services released by the HSE shows that many hospitals overran their budgets by more than €112 million in the first four months of this year.

“Simply attempting to balance the books will not address the issue,” said Mr Naughton.

“The health service in this country is in crisis. Hospital overspending is a symptom of the greater malaise that is facing the HSE.”

And, he said, instead of taking immediate steps to tackle the root causes of hospital overspending, such as the lack of community care services and the underdeveloped level of primary care, the HSE’s solution was to impose cutbacks.

Mr Naughton said the directive would affect every hospital in the west/north-west hospitals group as all of them had exceeded their budgets by more than 5%.

He pointed out that hospitals in this region had overspent their budgets by more than €22.5m or 12.8% in the first quarter of this year.

“This figure has continued to rise as I revealed a fortnight ago when I published figures showing that the overspend at the end of May was €27.28m,” he said.

The HSE stated last night that it has no intention of cutting its current level of hospital services in the Irish hospital service.

Its objective was to maintain current service level agreements, it said.

The authority said it was also implementing a value-for-money team with the aim of introducing a value-for-money scheme for the hospital sector.

HSE chief executive Professor Brendan Drumm, had warned that there were early indications that the National Hospitals Office in its own right could not deliver sufficient cost-saving measures to achieve a balanced budget.