High hopes for hotel hospital cases

HSE chief Prof Brendan Drumm thinks “putting patients up in hotels instead of hospitals is the way forward for the health service” (Irish Examiner, September 21).

Surely every right-thinking person must agree with him? With a few minor tweaks, this could be the answer to the health service’s problems.

A hotel by definition is a “commercial establishment providing lodging and meals” while a hospital is “an institution for the care of the sick”.

This is just a nit-picking problem that can be solved by calling the new arrangement the “hotsplitel” (pronounced “hot-split-el”).

The name, in fact, comes from my then two-year-old son pointing at Cork University Hospital through the car window and saying “hotsplitel” — the boy was a far-seeing genius even back then!

Of course, Prof Drumm has no experience in the hospitality industry, which is a bit of a problem, but there’s an obvious solution to this.

In much the same way that Health Minister Mary Harney set up the HSE and was then able to deflect all criticism of herself by saying “that’s a matter for the HSE”, Prof Drumm could set up the “HSSA” or “Hospitality Sector Staging Areas”. This would be an independent organisation, run along the lines of the HSE itself with one worker responsible for everything and 83 managers supervising him (or her).

Then when the professor is quizzed about hospital beds, etc, he need only say “that’s a matter for the HSSA”.

This suits everybody as the wealthy can travel Clarion-style, the pinched middle classes can flop into a Jurys Inn and the poor can check in with the

Simon Community.

It fits our existing structures too as, for example, Simon won’t be building a hostel near the Blackrock Clinic anytime soon.

If the lone worker in the HSSA pulls it off in a spectacular way, there won’t be one poor soul in a hospital bed anywhere, our hotels will be so busy that you’ll pay 200 a night for a bunk in the corridor, criticism of the HSE will disappear and Prof Drumm can award himself a bonus of 80,000 a week and pay himself from the savings made.

You know it makes sense.

John Mallon

Shamrock Grove

Mayfield

Cork