{"id":494635,"date":"2026-06-11T17:19:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T17:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/494635\/"},"modified":"2026-06-11T17:19:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T17:19:11","slug":"leaked-chi-report-states-consultants-prioritising-private-over-public-child-patients-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/494635\/","title":{"rendered":"Leaked CHI report states consultants \u2018prioritising private over public\u2019 child patients \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hospital consultants are prioritising private patients over those on public lists, a TD has claimed as he revealed details of a leaked report on Children\u2019s Health Ireland (CHI<\/a>).<\/p>\n

People Before Profit<\/a> TD Paul Murphy<\/a> said the EY report, commissioned by Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill<\/a>, shows children \u201cwho need urology surgery are waiting up to a year longer if they don\u2019t have private health insurance\u201d.<\/p>\n

Citing examples in various health sectors, he said a urology consultant in a sample group in the report has 20 public child patients with an average waiting time of 12.4 months, while 10 private patients wait 1.84 months.<\/p>\n

In urology, of the 73 patients reviewed, 41 per cent were treated outside the clinical recommended time frames, with a median delay of 152 days. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere was one case where a child waited seven years for routine surgery,\u201d Murphy said, raising the issue in the D\u00e1il.<\/p>\n

An orthopaedic consultant cited in the report had an average waiting time of 8.7 months for public paediatric patients and two months for private patients.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s pretty much across the board in terms of a massive discrepancy of waiting time in public versus waiting time for private,\u201d the Dublin South-West TD, who has received part of the EY report, not the full document, said.<\/p>\n

\u201cKids who need time-sensitive spinal surgery are waiting more than six months longer because their little bodies are less profitable to operate on.\u201d<\/p>\n

For spinal patients, only 41 per cent \u2013 nine out of 22 \u2013 were treated within the clinical recommended time frames, and 59 per cent faced delays, sometimes for several months, \u201cwith a median delay of 143 days\u201d.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Rotunda consultant row is just the tip of the icebergOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Calling for the report to be published immediately, Murphy said the document showed \u201cchildren may wait longer than clinically recommended for assessment, investigation, or treatment of potential consequences for clinical outcomes, disease progression, and quality of life\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said \u201cjust as private healthcare has no place in the Rotunda, it should have no place in Children\u2019s Health Ireland\u201d.<\/p>\n

Replying for the Government, Minister for Enterprise Peter Burke said he had not seen the report and did not know \u201cwhat version you have that\u2019s leaked\u201d.<\/p>\n

But he stressed the Minister for Health commissioned the report to investigate practices in CHI \u201cand to ensure that there was equity of treatment of patients\u201d.<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cI am confident that she will take action, because she has demonstrated quite clearly over the last number of days\u201d that when she guaranteed public-only consultant contracts \u201cshe has got results\u201d.<\/p>\n

Murphy said, however, that commitment to public healthcare is somewhat undermined \u201cby the fact that private suites are being built in the new national children\u2019s hospital right now \u2013 more inequality literally being built into the system\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Minister said Carroll-MacNeill worked to ensure \u201cpatients get equality of care right across our economy\u201d. He said great work had been carried out with public only consultant contracts and that almost 70 per cent of consultants worked on public only contracts.<\/p>\n

Through these contracts \u201cwe can manage clinically, we can manage consultant availability with public demand\u201d. The public only contracts were already showing improvements; in the Mater hospital there were an additional 180 CAT scans monthly and 84 MRI scans, he said. <\/p>\n

In other hospitals many theatres \u201care now operating on weekends. We get additional days out of consultants and, critically, that key decision makers are in the room when patients have to be triaged and clinical decisions have to be made.\u201d<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the Department of Health, responding to the claims in the D\u00e1il, said the HSE chief executive had commissioned an audit to \u201cassess governance and equity in access to care\u201d at CHI following concerns raised in previous reviews.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe audit is being augmented by a qualitative element, through the appointment of a patient advocate who is capturing patient and staff experiences, which will inform overall observations and improvement plans,\u201d the statement went on.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe audit was completed in recent days and is currently under consideration by the HSE and the Department.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hospital consultants are prioritising private patients over those on public lists, a TD has claimed as he revealed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":494636,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[30791,103,397,396,61,60,1421,7118,43923,12361],"class_list":["post-494635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-children-s-health-ireland-chi","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jennifer-carroll-macneill","tag-paul-murphy","tag-people-before-profit-solidarity-pbps","tag-peter-burke"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/494636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}