Reilly to spend €569k on managers

Health Minister Dr James Reilly is to spend another €569,000 on management consultants.

The move follows a spending of €1.2m on outside experts as part of his drive to reduce waiting lists, and combat the problem of having patients on hospital trolleys.

PA Consulting and the Centre for Diagnostic Management will work with the special delivery unit he created last year to prioritise improved access to hospital care.

A spokesman for Dr Reilly acknowledged “the necessary knowledge base required” by the minister for the unit could not be found in the Department of Health or the HSE.

He said the department had encountered a similar problem last year when they had sought to hire experts in unscheduled surgery planning.

Such skills could not be found within the health department or the HSE and they had been forced to go outside Ireland as “we couldn’t find anyone here”.

Eventually, they put the job out to tender and hired Lis Nixon who — on a contract salary of €164,000 a year — is the director of performance improvement for unscheduled care.

PA and CDM will employ nine and three workers respectively and are expected to have their work finished by the end of this year.

CDM are charged with drawing up a document and training materials which will provide the “rationale, justification and operational approach” which will underpin Dr Reilly’s planned revamp of scheduled treatment in Ireland.

They will also devise models and tools to be used in the overhaul.

PA Consulting will then be charged with visiting hospitals and drawing up a report on their findings.

On top of the €480,000 being spent on Ms Nixon’s salary in the coming years, €730,000 in ex-Vat payments have been earmarked for the unit’s senior adviser Dr Martin Connor, between 2011 and 2014.

Dr Connor will not be working at the Department of Health on a full-time basis as he spends two weeks a month as a research fellow at Stanford University in California.

Last summer, Dr Reilly created the special delivery unit.

The unit — effectively a mini-department within the Department of Health — has an €85m annual budget. It employs 17 people.