Hospital co-location plans a con

IT is unsurprising that the Government does not know the cost of its hospital co-location plans (July 26).

Look at the wildly fluctuating costs quoted on hospital beds. In 2002, for example, the cost of building a hospital bed was €125,000. In 2005, the same bed was reported to cost €500,000. In May 2006, the Health Minister claimed each bed cost €1m to build — an increase of almost 900% in four years. No explanation was given for this extraordinary leap in building costs.

Hospital running costs showed the same distressing tendency to jump.

Ministers could not possibly have been briefed on the full costs of co-location, as claimed, as many of its hidden costs are incalculable. The total cost to the public purse of compensating public hospitals for lost private income; of highly paid consultants going AWOL during public working hours; of picking up the tab for medical malpractice in co-located wings; and of providing them with intensive care beds, diagnostics and other public facilities is immeasurable.

The Government quotes the National Development Finance Agency as saying co-location offers “value for money”. But in 2004, Anne Counihan, then head of the agency, told a health conference that public-private partnerships cost more, but “the transfer of risk away from the public sector” justified the additional cost.

Contrary to Mary Harney’s claims, co-location will, at most, release 290 beds back into the public system and these will cost €300m more than if we had built them ourselves. The minister also neglected to spell out that in order to “save” half a billion, we would first have to sign away half a billion –– to finance beds which will not belong to us.

Meanwhile, in order to access beds built with their money, taxpayers will have to pay for them a second time, either through general taxation, private health insurance or their own pockets.

Under the Harney plan, the State will buy co-located services through the National Treatment Purchase Fund and the Health Service Executive, paid for out of the public purse.

Will the bills be exorbitant? US research shows the mark-up in private hospitals varies from a low of 1,000% for surgery to a high of 5,000% for medical supplies, with the drugs mark-up coming in at 2,300%.

Co-location is not only a sponge, it is also a con.

Marie O’Connor

42 Rathdown Rd

Dublin 7