NEW RULES TO control overspend in the health service will impact patient safety because it will impose a \u2018de facto recruitment freeze\u2019, the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) has said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The IMO, which represents doctors, said that the Department of Health\u2019s new sanction process to control spend over their budgets comes with a \u201cprohibitive hurdle\u201d that will halt hospitals replacing existing positions or employing new staff.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The IMO states this plan has already commenced and means that any health region running more than 2% over its pay budget looking to replace or recruit staff must first consider whether the work can be delivered differently or met using staff and resources already available.<\/p>\n
Professor Matthew Sadlier, President of the IMO, said the measure was \u201cDraconian\u201d and it poses a \u201cclear and significant risk to patient safety\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot only does the measure in isolation place unrealistic and prohibitive barriers on doctor recruitment, but it comes against the backdrop of a department setting wholly inappropriate budgets and in a health system that does not have nearly enough doctors to meet ever-growing demand.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo meet the needs of our population we need 6,050 consultants \u2013 we currently have 4,945 whole-time equivalents and, of those, 20% are not filled on a permanent basis with over 325 posts unfilled. Consultants are covering long-term vacancies right across the system which is unsustainable.<\/p>\n
\u201cWaiting lists will continue to grow until we have a sustainable and funded workforce, which means patients will be denied timely care,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sadlier said that it was \u201cwholly unacceptable\u201d that, when a consultant leaves or retires, time would be wasted making an \u201cunnecessary\u201d case for their replacement.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need rapid turnover of doctors throughout the system to ensure patients are not adversely affected by natural attrition. The timelines from business case to approval to appointment are already too long,\u201d he added.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
Risk assessment<\/p>\n
Sadlier said it was unclear if a risk assessment for the introduction of this measure had been carried out by the Department of Health or HSE.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He added that the measure was likely to represent a clear breach of employment rights, in that doctors who have applied and interviewed for, then accepted a role, would now have no guarantee it would be funded. He noted that the IMO is already in the process of representing members who have been impacted in this way.<\/p>\n
Sadlier said the government needed to start being honest with the public about the real provision of health services.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith this measure, the reality is there will be no new services and no expansion of capacity, with the current level of services under threat. It is obvious that the Government\u2019s aim is to reduce the number of people delivering care, not increase them,\u201d he explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The IMO is seeking immediate engagement with both the Department of Health and the HSE on this matter.<\/p>\n
Labour Health spokeswoman Marie Sherlock TD has said the minister for health and minister for public expenditure have now \u201clost the run of themselves\u201d in their desperate and reckless bid to contain the HSE deficit.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are serious questions to be asked about the competence of those making these reckless decisions about how our health service is run.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe decision to force all recruitment decisions through the Department of Health tears apart the notion that the HSE runs the health service.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut more crucially, it divorces the link between patient safety and clinical decision-making about safe staffing with the appropriate local and regional HSE managers who are tasked with running the health service.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is both reckless and downright dangerous at a time when hospitals are already relying to an alarming extent on surge capacity and dealing with very high increases in demand,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Statements have been requested from the HSE and Department of Health.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW RULES TO control overspend in the health service will impact patient safety because it will impose a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":664756,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3414,281373,2120,61,50442,60,97947,43],"class_list":["post-664755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-department-of-health","tag-health-cuts","tag-hse","tag-ie","tag-imo","tag-ireland","tag-irish-medical-organisation","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664755","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=664755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664755\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/664756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}