HSE can ill afford gross ineptitude

As the financial crisis engulfing the HSE deepens, it is appalling to see the scale of staff overpayments that continue to draw on the near-empty coffers of a dysfunctional organisation whose bureaucratic bungling makes a mockery of the concept of giving taxpayers value for money.

Some stories in today’s revealing report — based on an internal audit of financial, staffing and IT issues in the HSE South area — would be risible if the underlying implications were not so serious. There is every reason to suspect this costly ineptitude is mirrored in other geographic areas of the organisation by half-yearly audits.

We learn, for instance, that salary overpayments in Cork and Kerry in 2010 amounted to €406,000. Now, in the context of a payroll of more than €800m that figure may seem insignificant, but considering the hapless plight of the country every euro must be made to count by those responsible for managing the health budget.

Unsurprisingly, the overpayments were largely due to blatantly obvious oversights such as failing to take account of a change in work times or payments still being made to people after they retired.

Take, for instance, the case of an anonymous consultant, who has since retired, promising that he would return an overpayment of €10,000 “in due course” but failing to do so since 2005. A nurse who had received a similar amount in error was told she would have to work for up to 46 years to clear the debt.

In the year 2010, the auditors found 246 cases of overpayment ranging from €53 to €70,000. This scenario is outrageous when viewed against a backdrop of the HSE’s financial problems which are now so serious that one hospital, the South Infirmary Hospital in Cork, cannot afford to carry out blood tests for GPs. When patients go to hospital in the 21st century, surely they have a right to expect such basic services as blood tests.

Reports of this kind are extremely worrying and say a great deal about the difficulties besetting the HSE. The best that can be said of this alarming situation is that the issues outlined in the report were exposed by the HSE’s own auditors who deserve to be applauded for not sweeping their damning findings under the carpet.

With the HSE financial deficit now topping €280m, the Government has been told bluntly by the EU/ECB/IMF troika to take a scalpel to health spending. That will involve painful cuts to an ailing service already at breaking point.

Besides being costly, bureaucratic bungling of this kind is politically embarrassing for the Government. Moreover, it will further undermine the already damaged reputation of Health Minister James Reilly.

The public has yet to hear a satisfactory explanation of the circumstances surrounding his appearance in Stubbs Gazette as one of the five-member consortium owing a €1.9m debt arising from the investment in a Tipperary nursing home. Combined with the failure to comply with a High Court order, this controversy has cast a long shadow over his political future. Dr Reilly has a bounden duty to put all the facts on the table.