Staff freeze won’t hit patient care, says Harney

HEALTH Minister Mary Harney has dismissed any suggestion that the staff freeze imposed by the Health Service Executive (HSE) this month could be impacting on patient care.

Ms Harney was speaking at the Irish Nurses Organisation (INO) Conference in Killarney where nurses were expressing widespread anger about “cutbacks”.

“There are 120,000 people working in the public health system and I cannot see how 200-300 less people can have the dire consequences which are being predicted in some places but I would say to management that it is imperative that patient care is not affected,” Ms Harney said.

“We are going to take away 2.9 million nursing hours between now and next June as we reduce the nurses’ working week from 39 to 37.5 hours and what’s happening this month is nothing compared to that.”

Labour party spokeswoman on health, Deputy Jan O’Sullivan said Ms Harney was “burying her head in the sand” by failing to acknowledge that the staff embargo would affect patient care.

International experts including chief nursing officer at the Western Australia Department of Health, Dr Phillip Della and York University professor of health economics, Alan Maynard will also sit on the board.

A new director of cancer control for the whole country will also be announced shortly, she said.

The director will be charged with centralising cancer care.

“The director will be given resources to ensure a world class service across the country. Services are fragmented now and we need to see a rationalisation of care so that everyone has access to evidence-based world class care. I genuinely believe that families want the best outcomes for patients but a rationalisation of care will require courage and will be a challenge for all,” she said.

Referring to a statement yesterday morning from the State’s National Implementation Board (NIB) about the HSE failure to communicate with healthcare unions about the proposed staff embargo, Ms Harney said she too wanted “dialogue, discussion and teamwork” in the healthcare services.

In the statement, the NIB said they wanted to “express its disappointment that the response to the financial situation has resulted in a marked absence of partnership and joint problem solving”.

The NIB also said that they are concerned the HSE action could negatively affect the ability of the recently established Health Forum to achieve change across the health services.