HSE needs €130m to break even by year’s end

The HSE’s latest performance report has admitted an additional €130m of “cost and cash measures” will be needed over the next three months if it is to break even by year’s end.

Department of Health secretary general Dr Ambrose McLoughlin yesterday told the Oireachtas Committee on Health the overspend in the health service had reached €330m by the end of August.

The HSE’s July 2012 performance report gave a deficit of €179.6m in hospitals, €121m in Community Drug Schemes and €66.3m for community services. Beaumont Hospital’s overspend stood at €17m, the Mid West Regional at €14.6m, Galway University Hospital is €11.9m in the red and Cork University Hospital has overspent by €10.3m.

The report said “aggressive cost containment plans” have been in place since the beginning of the year. “However as a result of the ongoing high demand for services, these reductions have not been sufficient to deliver a balanced budget at year end,” it said. “An additional €130m of cost and cash measures are now required in order to deliver on a balanced vote at year end. The total value of the measures agreed with the Department of Health which will not impact on frontline services is €72.5m and implementation of these measures started on Sept 1.”

The latest HSE performance report also reveals that in just eight of the country’s hospitals there were almost 77,807 patients waiting more than a year for a consultant outpatient appointment.

* Waterford Regional — 20,945 patients

* Galway Hospital Group — 21,089

* Limerick Regional — 14,263

* Cork South Infirmary/Victoria Hospital — 5,784

* Tallaght Hospital — 5,115 patients

* Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital — 4,577

* Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital Crumlin — 3,632 patients

* Beaumont Hospital — 2,402.

Overall, there were 340,000 people waiting for appointments, almost double the 175,000 who were waiting when the figure was published in April. The report also revealed that just 39.2% of urgent breast cancer referrals to Cork University Hospital were dealt with within two weeks. The report said this was due to capacity issues and two consultants on leave for the month of July.

“All patients have now been seen,” it said. “While 39.2% of patients were seen within 10 working days, 60% were seen between 11 and 14 working days and the remaining two patients were seen within 17 working days.”

Dr McLoughlin said efforts were also under way to reduce absenteeism in the health system. Rates of sickness had been reduced from 4% to 2.8% in his own department, he told TDs, but there were still exceptions that had to be stamped out.