‘Fixing health service will take decades’

Ireland’s damaged and dangerous health service has almost reached a point where it could take decades to repair, doctors have warned.

The Irish Medical Organisation yesterday outlined the “critical steps” they believe must be taken to keep patients safe.

The group claims that patient safety has been compromised across the health services as a result of successive and unrealistic budgetary cuts in recent years.

IMO president Trevor Duffy said the debate on the health budget was seen almost as a spectator sport by the political class but for many people in the system it was a matter of life or death.

“We are close to a point where the damage to the infrastructure of our health services will be so great that it will take decades to repair and we simply can’t bequeath this crisis to the next generation. We must act now,” said Prof Duffy.

The IMO’s pre-budget submission calls for increased funding and staff to stabilise the system and to ensure that funding allows patients to be safely treated.

It says any cost containment measures must be rigorously assessed against the risk of patient safety and the long term impact assessed before they are introduced.

It has also called for the immediate abandonment of all co-payment models, such as prescription charges, because they were “proven to be detrimental” to long term health and disproportionately affected the most vulnerable.

The IMO says GP care based on income and medical need should be introduced, together with chronic disease care packages.

However, any extension of GP care to the population must be done on the basis of medical evidence and not political expediency.

The IMO says there is “no medical evidence” to support the continued roll out of GP care based on age cohorts.

Prof Duffy said the doctors leaving the country out of frustration included established GPs and consultants who had no plans to return.

“We need to decide now if we want to be part of a society that provides a health system which can offer the people of this country the kind of world class care that they expect of if we are going to settle for a fractured service that is detrimental to the long term health of our nation,” he said.

Meanwhile, the IMO has suspended its ballot of consultants and non-consultant hospital doctors over new pay scale proposals for newly appointed consultants, which were agreed at the Labour Relations Commission recently. The union is awaiting confirmation from the HSE that it does not plan to cut the clinical director allowance, which some consultants have, for management roles.