Meaningless CUH assessment costs €38k

THE Health Service Executive (HSE) has spent almost €40,000 of taxpayers’ money to help it decide whether or not to go ahead with an accreditation exercise that may or may not help demonstrate its commitment to patient care.

International accreditation experts, Joint Commission International (JCI) was paid €38,000 for an eight-day on-site assessment of services at Cork University Hospital (CUH) — a meaningless preliminary exercise that did nothing to enhance the hospital’s standing unless a full audit is commissioned. The HSE has yet to decide whether to engage JCI for full and formal accreditation.

The significant spend on a potential accreditation process comes at a time when consultants at the hospital face the prospect of losing personal secretaries. From October, because of the ongoing embargo on recruitment of clerical staff, medical secretaries will be drawn from a pool shared between departments rather than individual consultants having a named secretary.

IMPACT, the union representing affected workers, said there is a huge deficit in clerical and administrative staff in hospitals across the south and south east. Assistant general secretary, Marie Levis, said this was due to the recruitment embargo which meant non-replacement of staff who retired or went on maternity leave.

“The majority of staff we represent in this category are women and so maternity leave is a huge issue. At one stage in Kerry General Hospital, 14 medical secretaries were on maternity leave and could not be replaced,” Ms Levis said. Clerical staff numbers will deplete further in the coming months as workers retire before the specified February 29, 2012, deadline for the so-called “grace period” within which pensions are unaffected by recent pay cuts.

The HSE said the decision to reorganise clerical administrative support services was taken in the context of “the existing difficult economic climate together with the reduction in staffing numbers for CUH”. It said the reorganisation of work practices was being worked through with a multi-disciplinary group, which includes representation from IMPACT.

The HSE refused to supply any figures that would show how clerical staff figures have changed over the past three years.

In relation to the JCI payment, it said the company was “the sole organisation worldwide capable of providing this specialist [accreditation] expertise”.