Unions must act to... Stop €245 million health cutbacks Stephen Boyd |
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The crisis in the health service has deepened with the announcement by the HSE of cutbacks to deal with a €245 million “overspend”. Hospitals around the country have been ordered to implement a recruitment ban, to lay off temporary and agency staff, and despite what Minister for Health, Mary Harney, has said – patients will suffer. Senior HSE management at Cork University Hospital (CUH) have outlined a series of proposals in an internal document seen by The Socialist entitled “Cost containment initiatives”. A fancy phrase for health cutbacks! The planned cutbacks at the CUH will be duplicated around the health service and the document outlining these plans states: “Bring forward Christmas shutdown by one week”; “Cancel elective surgery, outpatients clinics; accelerate bed clearance for holidays etc”; “Close admin depts, labs, supports etc. 14 December emergency cover only”; “Immediate release of summer locums and short-term/temporary staff…release existing cover, agency staff, short term contracts”. These cutbacks will mean less doctors in the CUH and that agency nurses will be let go. Overtime, which is essential to keep the hospital functioning is to be cut by between 10 – 20% and canteen and car parking charges are to be increased. The Midland Regional Hospital have asked doctors to cut medical day cases by 55 a month and to cut return visits to the outpatient department by 30% and the clinic must close at 5pm. An operating theatre is to be shut at the South Tipperary General Hospital, and a cardiac clinic at Ennis Hospital. The crisis in the country’s A&E departments will hit the headlines again this winter because the government has not taken effective action to overcome the shortage of hospital beds and are doing the opposite - cutting doctors’ hours, getting rid of essential nursing staff and reducing medical procedures. The government needs to dramatically increase health spending. Ireland has a crisis ridden health service because of the damage inflicted by the cutbacks of the 1980s and the current governments policy of running down the public health system in favour of private for profit hospitals. The Irish Medical Organisation says we need 15,000 extra hospital beds to overcome the serious problems in our public health system. In May 2006, Minister for Health Mary Harney stated that it costs €1 million to create a new hospital bed. On that basis it would cost €15 billion to provide the 15,000 hospital beds that are needed. This seems like a huge sum of money, but the government’s latest National Development Plan for 2007 – 2013 will cost €184 billion. For the equivalent of 8% of the NDP budget, the public health service could be transformed and the problems with A&E and waiting lists ended. Instead of this, we now have cutbacks and the co-location of private for profit hospitals to drain even more resources from the public health service. |
Once again women’s health needs come in second place to a government determined to push ahead with the privatisation of the health service, while underfunding public health care. |
They plan to defer further development of the Day Procedures Unit and the new Maternity Hospital. Management have been instructed to “take whatever action needed to eliminate the budget deficit by year end”, and have also stated it is “unrealistic to have a totally balanced budget, without severely impacting on patient activity”. In other words, patients will suffer. 
Breast cancer treatment in Barringtons private hospital in Limerick has been suspended with an “immediate an ongoing risk to patients” identified. Hundreds of women who attended the hospital since 2003 are now waiting to have their cases reviewed. In one case a 51 year old woman was discharged the day after a masectomy with a drain attached to her. The explanation given was that “patients recover better in their own environment”. No mention was made of the fact that turnover of patients increases profits. Giving them time to recover does not.