Sláintecare director resigns as report shows 'significant challenge' in tackling waiting lists
The executive director of Sláintecare, Laura Magahy, has announced her resignation, and will leave along with chairperson Dr Tom Keane who will leave the programme as his term as chair is ending. File picture: RollingNews.ie
The director of the Sláintecare programme has resigned, as a progress report shows a “significant challenge“ to tackling the more than 900,000 people languishing on waiting lists.
Executive director Laura Magahy left her post yesterday.
Chair of the Sláintecare advisory council Dr Tom Keane also left the programme. However a Department of Health spokeswoman said his departure reflected “his appointment to a three-year term as chairperson in 2018". The department thanked Ms Magahy for her “commitment and dedication to implementing the Sláintecare programme of reform”.
This comes as a progress report on Sláintecare shows a “significant challenge” in tackling hospital waiting lists, because nobody will take “ownership of actions and implementation oversight”."
The report, due to be published next week, shows that no site has yet been chosen for elective hospitals in Cork, Galway, and Dublin .
The update states: “With a total of 112 deliverables for January - June 2021, 84 were on track, 25 have been progressed with a minor challenge, and 3 with significant challenge.”
It shows out of five large projects that the waiting list issue is proving the most problematic. It is understood the waiting list plan will be published separately in the coming weeks.
This plan for “a multiannual waiting lists reduction” is a critical issue for patients with latest figures from the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) showing over 900,000 people on lists.
A working group has now been established across the department of health, HSE and the NTPF.
However, the report warns of a “significant challenge” and says this marker means “unless major mitigant actions” take place “overall project milestones will not be delivered”.
The stumbling block is agreeing who will take “ownership of actions and implementation oversight”. This crucial step should have been finished in June but was still “under consideration”.
Setting up workstreams for these is also marked as facing a “minor challenge”. Details are not given but this is described as linked to the cyberattack and delayed to the end of September.
The report shows the expert panel for elective hospitals remain focused on choosing sites. It says only the panel has “substantially progressed” its work. However, costs in line with the public spending code were approved by the department in February.
The understands all sides of Cork City were searched for a suitable site but, due to plans for staff to work across the new site and existing hospitals, the western suburbs are the likely option.
It is expected to be a walk-in facility of around 200,000 sq ft and could reasonably be expected to cost over €100m.
More positively, it says there have been significant moves towards digitising health services, with over 1m individual health identifiers issued by the end of June.
The report says people who gave their PPS number when registering for a vaccine have been assigned an individual health identifier.
This identifier code could in future allow health workers to share patient records, making treatment faster and safer.
Patients are already benefitting from access to diagnostics and scans outside of hospitals under “enhanced community care” plans, the report found.
This now includes echocardiogram and spirometry, and approval was given for GPs to access specialised blood pressure tests through hospital laboratories.
It states the Patient Advocacy Service set up a complaints procedures for nursing homes run by the HSE or HSE-supported organisations in June.
A number of recruitment projects are marked as facing “minor challenges” including for audiology and neurological rehabilitation services.
The report says funding was released for recruiting 12 specialist nurses working on suicide prevention but does not say how many have been hired.
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