Patients could face longer waits as medical secretaries retire during HSE recruitment freeze 

Eddie Walsh  with protesting HSE clerical and administrative staff outside CUH last December. Picture: Chani Anderson

Patients could face longer waits for appointments as retired medical secretaries are not being replaced due to the HSE recruitment freeze, Fórsa has warned.

Medical secretaries manage clinics, admissions, and day cases for consultants, and share patient information with other doctors if needed. They manage patients’ charts and communication between the consultant, the patient, and their GP, among other activities.

Fórsa assistant general secretary for the South Eddie Walsh said anyone who leaves or retires is not replaced now. “If you have one less medical secretary, that is impacting the output in a department. It’s impacting the amount of clinics they run in a given week.

“So when you extrapolate that out into the dozens in the whole system, nobody can say that isn’t having any adverse impact.”

It is understood some hospital departments are already seeing problems around the recruitment of administrative secretaries.

There have been ongoing problems with recruiting these roles linked to salary rates, but it is believed the freeze is now adding to this.

Mr Walsh is aware of “300 vacancies in CUH alone” among all roles represented by Fórsa.

The CUH vacancies include 175 in clerical administration and 125 in health and social care roles, such as dietitians, pharmacists, speech and language therapists, occupational therapists, and clinical engineers.

“University Hospital Kerry has a total of 102 vacancies in Fórsa-represented grades,” he added.

Speaking at a joint Fórsa-Unison conference, he recounted a conversation with a hospital manager. “(They) said: ‘What is there I can work around with, I’ve nobody I can redeploy. Even if I could go out and look to hire an agency (worker), they’re not there. We have panels we could look to appoint someone from, but we’re not allowed because of the embargo.’”

The Irish Times reported this week that an internal HSE draft risk assessment found waiting list action plans acutely affected by the freeze, but supported the financial rationale for the pause. A Fórsa spokesman said their concerns are “borne out by that report”.

“They’re arriving at the same conclusions as ourselves, the impact on waiting lists, services, staff morale. But the financial element within that report; they tried to make the case for the cost reductions,” he said.

In the Dáil on Wednesday, Labour leader Ivana Bacik said: “All that is achieved by miserly recruitment freezes is to put more pressure on services.”

In response, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said 20,000 additional healthcare staff were recruited since 2020. He expects the HSE to recruit 2,000 staff this year and said:

“What we cannot have is what we have seen in the past, that is, the HSE getting approval for one group of staff but not hiring them and hiring a different group of staff instead. We have to put some decent control on this.”