HSE targets double-jobbing in €33m savings

THE Health Service Executive has introduced new measures to prevent agency staff double-jobbing as part of new contracts which will result in €33m savings this year.

The HSE announced yesterday that it has negotiated new contracts which will prevent agency nurses, doctors, health care assistants and allied health professionals from working outside their HSE positions.

As part of the reform, the HSE has reduced the number of agencies with which it had contracts from over 30 to just 12. Under the new measures, staff who take voluntary redundancy from the health sector will also be prohibited from working for agencies in HSE-funded operations.

The HSE’s national director of human resources, Seán McGrath, said the HSE would spend an estimated €105.1m on hiring agency staff in 2011 compared to €138.2m last year.

Mr McGrath said the HSE hoped that overall savings of €40m would be achieved when similar measures were extended to voluntary hospitals. It expects to hire the equivalent of 2,000 full-time staff from agencies during the current year.

Mr McGrath said the 24% reduction in agency costs was largely achieved through a reduction in agency fees and not on the pay of agency staff.

He also confirmed that 2,006 staff had recently left the HSE as part of its severance and early retirement scheme designed to reduce the number of people working in the health services.

Mr McGrath said the HSE had reformed its recruitment process arising out of a controversy which erupted last summer over how temporary staff were hired amid claims of nepotism.

He acknowledged that a “fragmented system” had been replaced by a “one standard” approach through the centralisation of its recruitment services through HSE offices in Manorhamilton, Co Leitrim.

Mr McGrath said no HSE employees had been disciplined as a result of an unpublished internal report into claims that family and friends of HSE staff were selected for temporary positions as community welfare officers last year.

The HSE said it would soon begin a recruitment campaign for junior doctors which would target medics in Pakistan and India to ensure that there was no shortage among the current cohort of 4,700 junior doctors.

Separately, the HSE’s assistant national director of primary care reimbursement scheme, Paddy Burke, said it hoped to achieve savings for €414m this year on community health schemes, including €200 through the reduced cost of drugs.