HSE forced to remove pay data from website

The HSE has been forced to remove from its website details of state payments to thousands of primary care health professionals.

This follows the Data Protection Commissioner threatening enforcement action against the HSE unless payment details covering billions of euro to individual dentists through the medical card system were removed from the website.

Nicola Coogan, a senior compliance officer with the commissioner, told the HSE it was a serious issue and that it was the intention of the office to take whatever enforcement steps it deemed necessary if the PCRS payments for dentists were not removed.

In response, the HSE has not only removed details of payments to dentists, but to other health professionals contracted to the HSE, including GPs, pharmacists, and ophthalmologists.

The HSE has removed details for the years 2009-2011. It confirmed yesterday that it has ceased publication of PCRS payments.

Details of payments to the healthcare professionals, totalling almost €1bn for 2012, the latest available figures, have not been published on the HSE website as a result of the commissioner’s action.

The threatened action by the Data Protection Commissioner followed a complaint from the chief executive of the Irish Dental Association Fintan Hourihan, who argued that there was no statutory basis or public interest justification for the publication of the payments.

In a letter released through the Freedom of Information Act, Mr Hourihan wrote to the HSE that his members “are concerned that they have not given consent” to the publication.

In a letter to the commissioner, Patrick Burke of the HSE’s PCRS service stated: “In essence, we are publishing this information in the interests of transparency so that the taxpayer is aware of the expenditure of public funds to dental practices.”

He added: “We receive a relatively large number of FoI requests for this type of information and we are trying to be upfront and transparent in relation to its availability.”

Mr Burke accepted that there is no specific legislative basis in the Health Acts for the publication of the information, but that the HSE relies on the general principle of transparency in publishing.

He added that the HSE had no particular difficulty in removing the information from its website as long it can continue to disclose the information through the FoI Act.

In response, Ms Coogan stated “as there is no statutory basis for the publication of this data, then such processing would not be in compliance with the Data Protection Acts. In addition, you do not have the consent of the dentists concerned to process their data in this manner.

“We accept that you have a need to provide transparency in the manner in which the finding is spent, but this should not be at the expense of an individual’s right to privacy.”

A HSE spokeswoman confirmed yesterday that it no longer publishes payments to primary care contractors on its website. She said: “The HSE will continue to meets its obligation under the Freedom of Information Acts.”

Mr Hourihan said the Irish Dental Union welcomed the HSE decision to cease publication of the payments.

He said the publication of payments “presented a misleading impression when viewed in isolation and suggested dentists were earning inflated levels of income when in fact the payments were to cover the cost for treatments already dispensed”.

He said: “The HSE also failed to consider whether the publication on a single freely consultable website updated by name relating to all of the beneficiaries concerned went beyond what is necessary for achieving the HSE’s legitimate aims.”

A spokeswoman for the Irish Medical Organisation, representing doctors, declined to comment.