Treatment purchase fund - Obstruction of scheme intolerable

AT a time when efforts are being made to overhaul Ireland’s creaking health service, it is outrageous but perhaps not surprising that a number of consultants and hospitals are obstructing the treatment of patients under the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF).

This regressive scenario, highlighted in the NTPF’s report on the progress of an increasingly successful scheme, is reprehensible and reflects badly on the motives of a vested interest group that includes some of the highest-paid people in the country.

In a healthcare system dogged by delays and difficulties, it is utterly unacceptable that individuals or institutions are not cooperating with measures aimed at accelerating the treatment of patients, many of whom have been waiting for years for surgical procedures which should be carried out as a matter of course.