Firm called in to tackle hospital trolley crisis

A PRIVATE consultancy firm is set to be parachuted into the health service in an attempt to solve the country’s hospital trolley crisis.

The Department of Health is seeking an external company to oversee emergency system reform under Health Minister James Reilly’s special delivery unit (SDU) plan.

The controversial move, which will see another private consultancy firm take responsibility for a vital part of the health service, was agreed after the department failed to find a suitable internal candidate.

Trade newspaper Irish Medical News has reported that the department is seeking all interested companies to tender for the position by January 23.

The chosen company will be based at the department’s headquarters at Hawkins House in central Dublin.

The contract will be for an initial three-month period, with quarterly reviews taking place every three months after this point.

The company’s responsibilities will include creating a national strategy to deliver a “sustainable reduction in waiting times”. This will specifically involve the elimination of emergency department trolley waits and overseeing attempts to meet the long-standing but rarely achieved six-hour maximum waiting time for patients in public hospital emergency departments.

Under the SDU plan, which Dr Reilly has championed as a way of putting extra focus on cutting waiting times and trolley count levels, two senior positions were advertised for experts to be brought in to improve access to scheduled and unscheduled care.

Dr Alan Smith, who was previously a public health medicine consultant at the National Cancer Screening Service, was appointed to the SDU’s scheduled care role in November.

However, despite receiving several applications for the unscheduled emergency care role, the department concluded that a more suitable candidate can be found via the private consultancy firm system.

The company appointed to this position will be tasked with publishing regular performance reports detailed a hospitals waiting time data and organisation additional support for facilities which “persistently under-perform”.

While no funding level for the role has been officially detailed, the department’s comprehensive review of expenditure has argued that the SDU’s total budget should be in line with that of the National Treatment Purchase Fund.

The NTPF saw its €85 million budget cut to €73m this year.

Earlier this month Dr Reilly abandoned a controversial plan to bring in outside consultancy firms to help manage services at the Mid-Western Regional Hospital in Limerick and the Galway University Hospital group. Five firms had been vying for the right to help run the Limerick facility, Nenagh and Ennis, and the connected Galway University Hospital, Merlin Park, Portiuncula, Ballinasloe and Roscommon General hospitals.