Hospitals must make €150m saving in 2015

Hospitals must make a €150m saving next year despite getting increased funding, it emerged yesterday.

Hospitals got an increase of €625m, or 5.4%, in funding for 2015, bringing the total amount allocated to €12,131m.

However, the State’s 48 acute hospitals have overspent their 2014 budgets by €268m so funding for next year is almost 1% less than the total paid out this year.

The HSE’s acute hospital operation plan for 2015 says that given the scale of the challenge it would be necessary to have measures in place by mid-February to reduce agency and overtime costs.

Savings to be made next year include €40m on agency staff and overtime; €23m on procurement and €10m on emergency department and other income.

However, it points out that a further €77m in savings will be needed to achieve break-even.

The health authority’s deputy national director of the hospitals’ division, Angela Fitzgerald, said they realised there was a limit to what they could do in reducing surgical waiting lists. However, 30% of the workload could be shifted to a more appropriate setting and there was a plan to have 20,000 extra day cases this year.

“Our day surgery rates are at 60%, they should be at 75%,” she said.

The target of eliminating wait lists after eight months was still there but would be challenging to achieve.

Next year, the HSE will start monitoring patients over the age of 75 attending emergency departments.

The HSE’s national director of mental health, Anne O’Connor said the availability of skilled staff, particularly psychiatric nurses, would be a “key challenge” next year.

There were “significant” staffing gaps and she expected the situation to become more difficult next year with a number of staff reaching retirement age at the same time.

Mental health has a budget of €757m for next year, along with the additional Programme for Government funding of €35m, an increase of €37.6m, or 5%.

HSE director of primary care, John Hennessy, said he was confident that free GP care for children under six years would be implemented by the second quarter of next year.

He said discussions were going well with GPs and contract issues had been “pretty much” resolved at this stage.

The next stage was the fee setting process and there was a framework in place to do that, “I still remain confident that we will be able to achieve this in quarter two in 2015,” he said.

HSE wishlist

HSE pledges for 2015:

- Free GP care for under sixes in second quarter of next year.

- Half of 800 sunbed facilities will be inspected to ensure under 18s not using them.

- 20,000 extra day procedures to reduce waiting lists.

- Short-term contracts offered to reduce agency costs.

- Hospitals to add meal calories to menus for staff and visitors.